GenAI’s capabilities and uncanniness to human speech patterns and artistic ability is improving constantly, quickly closing the gap and making it harder and harder to tell genuine hard work apart from generated slop.

Which is a problem when those resistant to supporting anything produced with AI begin desperately searching for patterns and fool-proof tells for who’s lying and who’s legitimate, hurting real creators who don’t pass their litmus test.

A shortlist of “tells” for when writing is generated that do-gooder sleuths have been spreading to ‘help’ stop the spread:

· Too many adjectives

· Too few

· Rampant use of em-dashes

· Stilted sentences

· Rambling sentences

· Flat characters

· Unresolved storylines

· Scenes that lack emotion

· Stories that lack structure

Do you see the problem yet?

I have this issue myself, as a writer in need of freelance beta readers. No AI detector is reliable, and the receipts to prove you’ve done your work legitimately are imperfect or simply unavailable, depending on your workflow. Accuse someone of putting your work through ChatGPT to give you feedback and all you have is their word that they haven’t. Freelancing scams have existed since long before AI, except instead of running away with your money and not delivering, now they can deliver effortless slop and pass it off as thoughtful critique that took them hours of their precious time.

I do not consent to my work being used to train these algorithms. If you’re a freelancer proud to use them, then use them transparently and get consent from your clients.

AI fanfiction is also a growing problem, where “writers” will generate a story and post it for attention and clout, in an environment where accepting payment is illegal. Antithetical to the concept of fanworks, the idea of fandom is to create and share your love of a piece of media. It can be messy, cringey, unprofessional, and rough around the edges, and it’s supposed to be. Fanworks are a labor of love beyond the expectations of the polished perfection of original fiction.

Generating fanfiction for attention and clout stinks of both insecurity and a complete lack of respect for fandom spaces. As many have said and are still loudly saying: “If you didn’t make the effort to write it, why should I make the effort to read it?”

The same applies to original fiction, especially independent publishing already suffering the stigma of not being “real” books because they weren’t accepted by famous publishing houses that have absolutely never once published something awful. Layering on the risk of someone indie publishing a book they didn’t even write makes it that much harder for legitimate indie authors to be taken seriously.

Rampant use of generative AI in writing didn’t happen in isolation. Standards of perfectionism and shunning the amateur work of inexperienced writers has always existed, but genAI allows people suffering insecurity to circumvent the path of learning and effort to fake their way into being perfect. They convince themselves they don’t need to learn, that writing is for chumps, that all they want is the end result and not the skills needed to get there, that there is no reward in effort, only product. They’re so afraid of failure that they refuse to try, and now they don’t have to.

And in a consumer-forward market, especially in fan spaces, the sense of community is dying in favor of thinking fanfiction as soulless content there purely for consumption, instead of a piece for conversation and interaction. Veteran fanfic authors are burning out and becoming jaded being treated like content generation machines instead of mutual fans of a piece of media, kicked out of the conversation about their own work and being robbed of engagement. So what’s left in the vacuum their departure creates? AI-generated fanfic. Endless, soulless, empty consumption.

With genAI lowering the barrier to entry to writing, so rises the perception that “anyone can do it” and the lack of respect and appreciation for the years of honing writing skill necessary to tell our most beloved stories. Why write when you can just have ChatGPT feed you all your wish-fulfilling fantasies?

But for those of us who refuse to support genAI, whether it’s on the environmental argument, the disrespect to artists and writers whose work is being stolen, the disrespect for the creative process, or all three, discerning what is real and what isn’t drives those demands for perfection even higher.

AI writing cannot compare to the skilled prose of a writer of ten years. But it can compare to the skills of an amateur first starting out. It can compare to a writer whose first language is not English. It can compare to a writer who is neurodivergent and who writes in a robotic or ‘inhuman’ way. It can compare to writers with learning disabilities. It can compare to a writer attempting to sound professional and impersonal.

Witch hunts abound, and I will use this term because of the volatility and virtue signaling around the perception of what constitutes “real art,” as people look for false positives everywhere so they don’t accidentally support fake content. They lob accusations at innocent artists who might not have hard evidence to prove their innocence. They perpetuate ableist and harmful stereotypes for what counts as “human” writing.

And in their fear, they are engaging less with fanworks, they’re more wary of independent publishing, they’re making artists who look like AI abandon their passions for fear of being automatically guilty unless proven innocent. Real artists aren’t getting the exposure and support they need as their work is being stolen to feed the soulless content generation machine.

As it has always been, a few bad actors are ruining it for everyone.

How do we stop this? Morality is becoming increasingly tied to consumerism, where what you buy, whether it be by convenience, necessity, cost, or ignorance, evidences whether you’re a “good” person, nuance lost. You cannot buy (or already own) a music album from a “problematic” band just because you like their music without having to desperately defend yourself that you’re not endorsing the band’s behavior. You cannot buy, or already own, a book from a “problematic” author without enabling their platform to continue. Harry Potter fans know this acutely.

Thus, if you are perceived as supporting something AI-generated, on accident or otherwise, you are part of the problem, you’re a terrible person, you’re destroying the environment, so they say. The desperation to not look like the problem makes people far more concerned with doing nothing wrong than daring to do something right.

Being tricked by convincing AI is not the end of the world, and fear of it should not stop you from buying a work of art in case it might be fake, because if it’s real, the real artist suffers and in your good intentions, all you’ve done it make it worse.

Part 1

Part 2

1. You don’t fall in love with your characters immediately

But when you do, it’s a hit of serotonin like no other. I’d been writing a tight cast of characters for my sci-fi series since 2016 and switched over in a bout of writer’s block last year to my new fantasy book. I made it about ⅓ through writing the book going through the motions, unable to visualize what these new characters look like, sound like, or would behave like without a ‘camera’ on them.

Then, all of a sudden, I opened my document to keep on chugging with the first draft, and it clicked. They were no longer faceless elements of my plot, they were my characters and I was excited to see what they could accomplish, rooting for them to succeed. Sometimes, it takes a while, but it does come.

2. Sometimes a smaller edit is better than a massive rewrite

Unless you’re changing the trajectory of your entire plot, or a character’s arc really is unrecoverable, sometimes even a single line of dialogue, a single paragraph of introspection, or a quick exchange between two characters can change everything. If something isn’t working, or your beta readers consistently aren’t jiving with a character you yourself love, try taking a step back, looking at who they are as a person, and boil down what your feedback is telling you and it might demand a simpler fix than you expect.

Tiny details inserted at the right moment can move mountains. Fan theories stand on the backs of these minutiae. One sentence can turn a platonic relationship romantic. One sentence can unravel a fair and just argument. One sentence can fill or open a massive plot hole.

3. Outline? What outline?

Not every book demands weeks upon weeks of prep and worldbuilding. I would argue that jumping right in with only a vague direction in mind gives you a massive advantage: You can’t infodump research you haven’t done. Exposition is forced to come as the plot demands it, because you haven’t designed it yet.

Not every story is simple and straightforward, but even penning the first draft with your vague plan, *then* going back and adding in deeper worldbuilding elements, more thematic details, richer character development, can get you over the writer’s block hurdle and make it far less intimidating to just shut up and write the book.

4. It’s okay to let your characters take the wheel

I’ve seen writing advice that chastises authors who let their characters run wild, off the plan the story has for them. Yeah, doing this can harm your pacing and muddy a strong and consistent arc, but refusing to leave the box of your outline greatly limits your creativity. I do this particularly when writing romantic relationships.

Did I plan for these two to get together? No, it just happened organically as I wrote them talking, getting closer, getting to know each other better in the circumstances they find themselves in. Was this character meant to be gay? Well, he wasn’t meant to be straight, but you know what, he’d work really well with this other boy over here. None of that would have happened if I was bound and determined to follow my original plan, because my original plan didn’t account for how the story that I want to tell evolves. You aren’t clairvoyant — it’s okay if it didn’t end up where you thought it would.

5. Fight. Scenes. Suck.

Which is crazy because I love fantasy and sci-fi, the actiony-est genres. Some authors love battle scenes and fistfights. It comes naturally to them and I will forever be jealous. I hate fight scenes. I hate blocking and choreographing them. I hate how it doesn’t read like I’m watching a movie. I hate how it could take me hours to write a scene I can read in 5 minutes. I hate that there’s no way around it except to just not write them, or put in the elbow grease and practice.

Whatever your writing kryptonite is, don’t be too hard on yourself. It won’t ever replicate the movie in your head, but our audience isn’t privy to that movie and will be none the wiser of how this didn’t fit your expectations, because it’s probably awesome on its own. It could be a fight scene, sex scene, epic battle, cavalry charge, courtroom argument, car chase — whatever. Be patient, and kind to yourself and it will all come together.

6. Write the scenes you want to write first

And then be prepared to never use them. It can be mighty difficult working backwards from a climax and figuring out how to write the story around it, but if you’re sitting at your laptop staring at your cursor and watching it blink, stuck on a tedious moment that’s necessary but frustrating, go write something exciting. Even if that amazing scene ends up no longer working in the book your story becomes, you still get practice by writing it. Particularly if you hate beginnings or the pressure of a perfect first page is too high, you’re allowed to write any other moment in the book first.

And with that, be prepared to kill your darlings. Not your characters, I mean that one badass line of dialogue living rent free in your head. That epic monologue. That whump scenario for your favorite character. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out anymore, but even if it ends up in the trash, you can always salvage something from it, even if that’s only the knowledge of what not to do in the future.

7. “This is clearly an author insert.” … Yes. It is. Point?

No one likes Mary Sues, because a character who doesn’t struggle or learn to get everything they want in life is uncompelling. The most flagrant author inserts I see aren’t Mary Sues, they’re nerdy, awkward, boring white guys whose world changes to fit their perspective, instead of the other way around — they don’t have anything to say. I’m not the intended audience to relate to these characters and I accept that, but I don’t empathize with the so-called “strong female character” who also doesn’t have flaws or an arc either.

A good author insert? When the author gives their characters pieces of themselves. When the “author insert” struggles and learns and grows and it’s a therapeutic experience just writing these characters thrown into such horrible situations. They feel human when they’re given pieces of a human’s soul. They have real human flaws and idiosyncrasies. I don’t care if the author wrote themselves as the protagonist. I care that this protagonist is entertaining. So if you want to make yourself the hero of your book, go for it! But make sure you look in the mirror and write in your flaws, as much as your strengths.

Feel free to check out my debut dark fantasy novel Eternal Night of the Northern Sky and my contemporary merfolk mystery novella Tell Me How Long.

All of these come with the caveat of except when done well. I’m ordering these from “I’m annoyed but I’ll get over it” to “Nope, DNF”.

10. Sad times = Alcohol

Everyone drinks when they’re depressed apparently. Only women or fat men are allowed to eat away their sorrows with ice cream and guilty pleasures. No one’s allowed to go on a self-pity shopping spree. No one just goes to bed.

They drink. Or they go shoot something. Or punch a wall. It’s usually out of a flask or a crystal decanter. It’s usually whisky (specifically bourbon) or scotch, or something out of a brown paper bag.

Maybe this is my own bias as someone who does not drink, but writers, please come up with more diverse ways to show your character is mourning someone or something, beyond immediately heading straight for the alcohol. Not everyone likes liquor, not everyone owns a decanter set and crystal glasses.

Let them eat or shop or sleep or get high, or watch their favorite show or a really sad movie or listen to emotional music. Let them cry if they’re bad boys. Don’t make them punch walls.

9. Down time = Sexy Times

This applies of course only to narratives with implicit or explicit sex scenes and what I mean by down time is those situations where characters are either on the run or have some crucial deadline to meet, some race to win, what have you, and the second they get some time to breathe and have a heart to heart, they both let their guard down and ignore impending doom and sleep together.

If you’re in the real world and you are that stressed for any of the reasons above, you’re going to be constantly looking over your shoulder, worrying about what you’re going to do next, wondering if you should even stop to rest, not be dead on your feet but have enough energy to bang.

Obviously if it’s played for humor, that’s different, but in dramas, or especially in environments not suited for intimacy (looking at you fantasy and sci-fi) it just feels ridiculous and particularly gratuitous.

It also tends to happen with near strangers who’ve only known each other for several days, possibly weeks with little buildup, and they also tend to be at each other’s throats bickering incessantly. Save the sex for after you’ve won and can really dedicate all your attention to enjoying it.

8. Pointless Filler Pit Stops

Or ones that last way too long for no reason. I love filler, but only productive filler. It doesn’t have to service the plot, but it does have to develop at least one character, a relationship, the lore, somebody’s backstory, or be really funny and/or interesting to sit through.

Usually, it feels like it’s there to pad the run time or slow the pacing, but rarely does anything for the overall story. A fair bit of season one of ATLA is filler pit stops, but even when they go to all these random places for one-off adventures, the story is still showing us the world they live in, making it a teachable moment, introducing important characters, foreshadowing, or is just mighty entertaining to watch.

ATLA has only one pointless filler pit stop: the infamous Great Divide. It doesn’t positively develop any of the main trio, we never see these side characters again, Aang’s story is a complete lie so it doesn’t develop the lore or the world, and, most importantly, it’s just frustrating to watch. Your first job as a writer is to entertain, and this episode is annoying.

7. Fridged Character Motivation

I don’t mind the “fridged lady love” inherently. It’s a quick and dirty way to give your brooding hero backstory and everyone is familiar with it. I’m annoyed at how it’s the only nuance these characters tend to get, like this man’s dead wife/girlfriend/dog is his sole motivation for everything he does in life and all his goals.

I like broody badasses. I don’t like one-note broody badasses. His character existed before he met his dead love interest. Who was he back then? Does he have any friends who hate the man he’s become? Old mentors who’ve lost their faith in him?

This man’s arc is usually not even therapy-via-violence to get over his dead wife, it’s just a ham-fisted excuse to make him mean and short-tempered. Who is he, unrelated to this fridged character?

6. Dumbass Villains

The villain has captured the hero and friends and plans some dastardly torture to break their will. The villain has all their tools prepared and monologues about how easy it’s going to be, and the hero usually says something along the lines of “you can’t break me” or “I can take it,” whatever. And after several pages or minutes of screen time, the hero’s right, and then the villain breaks out plan B: The hero’s love interest, or their parents, who have just been waiting in the wings.

Why is this almost never plan A? The hero can always handle the pain, and always breaks down the second it’s someone else’s health on the line. Why doesn’t the villain, who’s always pissed at the lack of results, start with the proper motivation?

It’s either this or they wait until the perfect dramatic timing to reveal some skill or weapon or ultimatum after precious time has been lost, deadlines have been missed, and money has been burnt. Or they’re in the boss battle and they wait until the hero thinks they’ve won to pull out their secret weapon.

Unless you can give your villain a valid reason to not start with all the tools they have at their disposal, it might as well be a reverse deus ex machina. Even if it’s something as simple as Plan B hasn’t arrived on scene yet.

5. Everybody Has a Somebody

The story wraps up and every eligible single character has a love interest they’re in varying stages of romance with. No one is spared, or they’re already dead. It’s a race to the finish line to give these characters significant others because that’s just what you do, it’s what audiences expect, there must be a romantic subplot.

Particularly annoyed when it’s an ensemble cast and the entire hero team only has relationships with other members of the hero team and no one outside this unit of 6–10 characters. No one is allowed to be single, or happy that they’re single. Everybody has somebody, no matter how well developed or plausible this relationship is.

4. Half-Baked Twist Villains

No one likes these characters and I’m not saying anything new here, and yet it still keeps happening. This one comes from just recently rewatching the abysmal Cars 2 and just trying to untangle this plot. This plot, that Pixar rinsed and repeated in Incredibles 2, and really thought no one would notice. This plot, where the villain creates a problem that doesn’t exist to make their own agenda look better, whether that’s malignant superheroes or green fuel.

Both try. Neither pretend the story is absent of a villain, unlike, say, Frozen. Both movies have a villain, they just have a hidden identity. The reveal just never hits as hard as the writers expect it to because, once again, they didn’t actually do the work to write a competent villain, they just slapped a “villain” sticker on their foreheads and called it a day. Why? Who cares.

3. Consequenceless Revivals

I love revivals, I love bringing characters back from the dead, love watching it, love writing it, love the drama.

Don’t love it when they’re suddenly back with no explanation or price to be paid. A character death should be a major event, and if you kill a character just to make your audience sad, then bring them back with zero effort, death begins to lose meaning in your world. CW shows are particularly terrible at this, specifically the TVD universe and Supernatural.

2. Wimping Out on Promised Death

This decision makes me want to throw the book at the wall, or pause the movie and walk away. It’s the penultimate battle, the prophecy is upon us, a character or one of two characters must die to save the day, it cannot be impeded, avoided, or circumvented. We’ve known this is coming since the story began and are prepared for the tears and bloodshed.

Then the magical miracle springs out of nowhere and everyone gets to live. Kill them.

Please. Even if it’s my favorite character, I’d rather cry over their death than be disappointed by plot convenience. If this is the tragic, fulfilling end to their arc, then that’s how I want it to end. Rarely do these characters get revived in a satisfying loophole everyone should have seen coming. I just feel manipulated.

1. Forced Miscommunication

In the real world, people make misassumptions all the time and many of us are conflict-averse. We avoid talking about our problems to those who’ve wronged us like we’re polarized magnets. Forced miscommunication doesn’t care about anxiety, which would be fascinating to explore as explicitly anxious characters suffering legit mental issues is under-utilized.

No, these instances just have characters eavesdropping or snooping and, out of character, make all these outlandish assumptions, refuse to listen to explanations, and start a fight that lasts juuuuust long enough until it’s magically resolved without consequence.

It doesn’t do anything for the story. It exists independently of these characters’ relationship and has zero impact once it’s resolved. I am 100% down for a single miscommunication causing an emotional outburst so extreme that it has the offended party seriously considering the strengths of their relationship, but it never happens that way.

—

The existence of a trope does not do the job of writing a compelling story for you. If you can look at any one scene in your book and not explain why it matters, what impact it has on the plot, story, or characters, delete it or rewrite it so it does. Even if it only exists to be funny, there should still be something gained from the experience.

“But why didn’t they just do that earlier!”

“You can time travel — so time travel!”

“Doesn’t X have Y spell? Why aren’t they using it to escape?”

“You. Have. Telekinesis! How are you this stupid?”

Plot holes! The bane of every writer’s existence. You think you’ve polished your beautiful manuscript, you have it all sent out for the masses to consume and praise and shower with compliments and adoration… and then they start tugging at a thread that may or may not begin to unravel your entire story. You’ve read this thing top to bottom, forwards and backwards and upside down, so many times the letters are burned into your brain. You mumble your monologues in your sleep — How did you not see this? How do you fix this?

Types of Plot Holes

1. Your magic system’s established rules have just been broken for tension
2. Your Deus Ex Machina really did come out of nowhere and is quite out of character
3. Why doesn’t Character just run away from a fight they can’t win?
4. Characters forgetting they have superpowers, extreme intelligence, handy tools or weapons, survival skills, common sense, or crucial information to escape and/or solve a situation
5. Characters dying for the above mistakes when said death could have been avoided
6. The entire story could have been avoided had Character A just told Character B the truth
7. Character X should have known ___ all along given their profession/backstory/friend circle/education/personality

And variations of the above. Fixing plot holes generally come in two camps: Those you can fix by rewriting the existing manuscript that contains the hole, or those you have to work around from a previous manuscript that’s already been published.

Why Plot Holes Happen

Plot holes happen in reality. Expecting your first, second, or 15th draft to be completely foolproof is utter nonsense. Real people forget stuff they’re supposed to know all the time, tools that would be useful are left behind, GroupThink makes very bad decisions.

The difference is: You are writing fiction. Your goal is to be entertaining, not necessarily realistic. A character simply forgetting Macguffin X at the climax of the story does not make for an entertaining read, no matter how likely it might be to happen in the real world.

You’re making this entire world up as you go and that alone is an impressive feat millions of others can only dream about — cut yourself some slack, okay? Everything is fixable.

Plot holes also happen because we’re so engrossed in our own story that we forget it’s all made up. You’re 22 chapters into a 24 chapter novel and you’ve just realized your psychic hero would never have been caught unawares like this.

“But that’s just how he is!”

No. Stop. That’s not just how he is. That’s just how you wrote him — and you can go back and un-write him. Any excuse you can dream up you can un-write, and unfortunately, you’ll likely have to do a fair bit of it if you still have the opportunity.

Plot holes generally open long after the inciting incident that causes them. If you’re going to fix it, duct-taping together a solution in that very same scene isn’t the way to do it. You have to figure out why it’s a hole at all, then go back and fix its foundations.

Finding Your Own Plot Holes

Sometimes you’re lucky enough to stumble upon them before it’s too late. A fair bit of the time, though, your audience has to tell you. Finding your own plot holes requires stepping back from your work and looking at it like you’re just a reader, not the author.

Read your plot out loud to yourself and keep asking questions like:

• Does this make sense for the scene?
• Does this only exist to look cool at the cost of logic?
• Are these rules I wrote too easy to break or contradictory in any way?
• Is there any other way for this character to escape this situation?
• Is the only solution here too contrived?

That, and having an army of beta readers who should show you flaws you’ve overlooked. Even then, some things just aren’t obvious at all until someone too smart for their own good points out something no one else considered before.

It’s okay. It’s not the end of the world.

Filling Plot Holes

1. Fix your broken magic system

A “magic system” broadly describes any type of powers / abilities / supernatural entities that function in your world. They can be in high fantasy, urban fantasy, sci-fi, or any genre really. The Force is a magic system, as much as is bending in Last Airbender even if no one calls it “magic”.

For example: Force users are telekinetic… and yet don’t simply repeatedly spam the “chuck my enemies into a wall / off a cliff / anywhere that is away from me” button. It’s what you’d call a “soft” magic system, it doesn’t have explicit rules on how and when it can and should be used. It just is.

Fixing holes in your magic system first demands examining why you wrote it the way you did, why you gave it these specific rules, or why you didn’t, and all the ways characters should otherwise be able to use it when your story demands they get creative.

For soft magic systems — never let the magic system win the day. It invites far too much scrutiny. Gandalf from Lord of the Rings is a Wizard. He can do an undefined number of spells and has an unclear number of abilities and limit to his reach. Gandalf’s magic is never the saving grace of the Fellowship. So asking “why didn’t Gandalf just do X” isn’t ever a question people have because success never depends on Gandalf doing X.

Everyone hates on the time turner in Harry Potter. Time travel is essential to the plot of Prisoner of Azkaban, without it the heroes fail. And yet, because it is time travel, why it never existed earlier and why they never use it again to solve more massive plot problems is a valid question. As goes with many spells and abilities in the series.

For hard magic systems — remember that you wrote the rules, you can go back and change them at any time before it’s published. Bending in Last Airbender is rarely the focus of any conflict. Yes, two benders will fight each other, but it’s not “who’s the stronger bender,” it’s “who’s smarter with their element”. Who better uses their environment? Which one is racing against a clock before reinforcements arrive and overwhelm them? Which one runs the risk of exposing themselves if they start bending? Whose mental state is crippling their bending today?

These are all character-driven explanations for why certain abilities do or don’t manifest in a given scene… until the finale when it really is just a clash of red and blue aura lasers.

There is never a scene where a character is trapped when they shouldn’t be. Never a “why didn’t you just X” moment, because it’s never about the bending, it’s about the bender.

1. Turn plot-reasons into character-reasons

This means taking a “why don’t they just do X” and making the reason because one of the protagonists is morally against doing it, not because the hand of the author demands it.

In Last Airbender, Aang is vocally against simply killing the Fire Lord. It would be easier, it would risk far less casualties and carnage, it’s fastest. And yet. Aang doesn’t do it simply because he’s not strong enough or he doesn’t have some magical super weapon, or the stars have aligned and now he’s lost a very convenient ability — Aang doesn’t want to take the easy road because that’s who he is as a person.

He’s been raised as a monk to value the preservation of life above all else (ignoring any accidental casualties over the course of the series). Him being desperate to not simply kill Ozai is central to his character and even when he has the chance in the climax of the fight, he still doesn’t take it.

Making these plot decisions character decisions, so long as they are in-character, gives some juicy potential for schisms within Team Protagonist as fan favorites clash over ideals and morals and whether or not the greater good is worth them sacrificing something so central to their being.

This also applies to characters not sharing crucial information with each other. Make them distrustful of the others, or let them attempt it anyway and have some other consequence for the effort. Anything is better than a character sitting on valuable info simply to maintain the mystery.

1. Avoid Deus Ex Machinas

The “surprise reinforcement cavalry charge” is one of my favorite deus ex machinas in fantasy. Everybody cheers, it looks amazing, the music is swelling, our heroes on the battlefield realize they haven’t been forsaken by their friends, etc.

In Lord of the Rings, yes, Theoden could have arrived 30 minutes earlier and saved even more lives, but we already knew he was on his way moving as fast as he could without exhausting his horses. Theoden’s army also took care of the bulk of the battle so when Aragorn arrives with the second surprise reinforcements, it’s less a decisive blow that comes out of nowhere and more the victory lap.

In “Battle of the Bastards,” Game of Thrones has its third surprise cavalry charge of the series, only this one much more explicitly comes to save the day. The difference between this scene and Theoden’s charge is: Audiences had no idea Littlefinger was on his way, and neither did Jon Snow. Had Sansa told him she had a plan, Jon could have waited. He wasn’t backed against a wall and forced to fight right then and there, he could have stalled an extra hour by just not showing up to the battlefield to wait for his cavalry. With Sansa inexplicably not telling him, she risked his life and the lives of his entire army because the hand of the writers wanted to keep it a surprise.

Surprise reinforcements, saviors, powers, and abilities always run the risk of “why didn’t they do that earlier” and you should be asking yourself the same question. If you can’t come up with an explanation other than “because it’ll look cool” go back to the drawing board.

Or, have your very own characters pissed that the savior didn’t just do that earlier. Have your characters ask where this special power was, have it mean something to them and the story at large. Had Jon been angry with Sansa, given their incredibly pyrrhic victory and the potentially avoidable death of their youngest brother, it might’ve made for some interesting character drama.

1. Give your saving graces deadly costs

“Why didn’t they just do X earlier?”

“Because doing X would have killed Character D, dummy.”

Giving your super special magic, mutant, super, or supernatural powers costs, drawbacks, and limitations forces the characters who use them to not resort to them every single chance they get. Their magic drains their physical stamina, or the demon they made a deal with camping in their brain threatens to overtake their psyche, or the sword is cursed and every time the hero raises it in battle, they lose a little piece of themselves. Or, using this creepy power strains their relationship with their friends or community.

Without risk and consequences, you cannot avoid “why didn’t they do that earlier,” because the only answer you have to give is “because I, the author, said so.” The only time a character is allowed to have selective amnesia about their superpowers is if it’s been established beforehand as a potential problem. Then it’s not “this came out of nowhere.” Then your audience is dreading the entire time waiting for that chekhov’s gun to fire.

1. Don’t compromise your story for sensationalism

Are you writing this scene purely for shock value, for the sake of a twist, because a story this grim demands at least one character death, or because it’s going to look epic?

You can write a scene for shock and awe, but if it’s at the expense of a character’s integrity or intelligence, come up with another way to make it spectacular. You want the villain to monologue to give the heroes time to save the world? Then write a villain with an ego and personality that would monologue. You want the hero to be a one-man-army? Then write their personality as the lone wolf type and have it be a flaw of theirs that they keep striking out alone, consequences be damned.

You absolutely need the hero to not take the easy road and fight the bad guy without using their most effective weapon? Give them a reason to stall this fight. Maybe they really do need to simply run out a clock, or they don’t actually want to kill/subdue their opponent, or in doing so, the villain’s death is what causes the Bad Thing to happen.

If I write a character that can kill with just a look, every time I put them in a dangerous situation I need to then justify why they don’t do that over and over again, unless it’s by their own stubborn integrity that they choose not to.

If I write a villainous plan so devious and well thought out, the only thing standing in the way is living protagonists? I need a reason the villain doesn’t just murder the heroes every chance they get. Maybe they’re internally struggling over actually going through with it, or their ego demands the hero doesn’t get a quick or honorless death, or they do actually need a living hero for the plan to work.

Fixing Plot Holes in Sequels

All of the above is advice for issues within the same manuscript. What happens if you’ve already published and have the chance to address a known plot hole in the sequel?

About the worst thing you can do is slap in a throwaway line or hasty explanation to cover your ass. Everyone reading and watching will notice. Saying nothing is better than saying that.

If your heroes can no longer use the Deus Ex Machina they used before — have them attempt to use it, and then come up with a solid reason why it’s not possible. Maybe it was one-time use, or the savior simply doesn’t want to, or the cost/risk is too high to attempt it again, or it simply can’t be found and it’s very frustrating.

Have the heroes be morally opposed to doing what they did before, or overconfident, or skeptical that it will even work again only for that choice to bite them in the ass later. Have the magic item all used up, the recipe to recreate it lost to history. There’s a hundred better excuses than the hand of the author simply saying so.

If you aren’t going to write a sequel and you accept living with the plot hole unfilled… chances are people are going to love the story despite its flaws. Harry Potter is the poster child of “why didn’t they use X spell to solve the problem” or “they have a spell for X, yet they don’t have a spell for Y?” and how many people love that story?

In the end, a plot hole can be tiny or massive and chances are the story you told is entertaining enough to make up for it. It’s just a story, it’s just fiction. Learn from your mistakes so the next piece you create is even better.

Check out my debut dark fantasy novel Eternal Night of the Northern Sky and subscribe for updates on my upcoming contemporary merfolk mystery novella Tell Me How Long.

I’ve been trying to figure out why an incident was still bothering me, concerning two people who I thought were friends and their approach to a public-facing opinion on a work that I’ve created.

After a bunch of cycles of “I’m upset but I’m going to suffer in silence to keep the peace” to “wait, I’m going to stand up for myself and explain myself” to “oh that was a monumentally bad idea, standing up for myself gets me hurt” to “I’m going to apologize and say what they want to hear to escape this mess” and back around to “I’m upset but I’m going to suffer in silence to keep the peace”

I’ve done it.

When I strip it down to fundamentals, the understanding I came to was this: The two most ardent defenders of their critical stance as being morally superior on a piece I did… were the only two who formed opinions on an unfinished piece and were unwilling to see or take into account the missing details beyond their scope.

And with that, there’s no point in being upset or being fixated on changing their minds, is there? It took me too long to get here, though, so here’s how that happened.

I could not let go of the hurt that something was unfair and the reasons that I was being given that, a) not only was it fair because opinion on art is inherently fair and, b) I was entitled for thinking otherwise, weren’t enough for me.

Until recently I was also unable to properly understand myself why I was upset, which surely continued the miscommunication.

No, actually, it wasn’t fair, nor honest, to give a public opinion that presumes to reflect the state of a whole and complete piece to those unaware of the truth, without having actually seen or caring to see the whole and complete piece.

It would be like, as a chef yourself, going to a friend’s restaurant to help them test a new menu, not liking a meal, then going on Yelp per your friend’s request to help them market their new restaurant and saying “it was mostly great but I didn’t like it”. On an unrefined meal missing key ingredients the chef told you would be added later thanks to your private feedback. Or, on only 3 parts of a 5-course meal meant to be judged as an ensemble. Maybe the missing 2 would make it better, or make it worse, you never tried them, so you’ll never know.

I will get into why I thought asking these friend-participants for feedback was a good idea below.

You don’t have to like the food, but without stating “also I didn’t actually eat the version the restaurant will be serving” … is that opinion truly fair and honest?

If I feel compelled to give my statement on a stage play, but I left at intermission and my statement says: “It was quite good, mostly, but it felt unresolved” but does not also say “also I left halfway through” I am putting egg on the artist’s face, when it should be on mine.

All I needed to hear was: “Hey, because I haven’t had the full meal the way it’s meant to be served, I can’t give my opinion, and since I didn’t like enough to try eating it again, I can’t help you.”

Even presuming that, no matter what, even with the added missing ingredients, you still would not like the food… you can sure be honest and tell the world your friend’s casual restaurant isn’t Michelin-level, because they serve Thai and you don’t like spice when peppers were all over the menu. You can do that. But if they get upset, I think that upset is justified.

Art, no matter the medium, is relative.

You don’t even have to stick around for the full meal if you really didn’t like it. But maybe… tell your friend, the chef, that asking for your public opinion on the matter would be unwise? Maybe?

I am also of the opinion that “I went to a Thai place that serves spicy food and it was spicy thus it is flawed” is not helpful to the Thai place, nor someone looking for a place to eat. I’m a chef that can handle when people don’t like my food. Critique me because the rice was undercooked, that the vegetables were mush, that the steak was poorly-seasoned, things within my control that I can improve with practice.

“This Thai place’s clearly-labeled spicy dishes are spicy and I didn’t like it” reads quite different from “This Thai place provides a color-coded menu for spice levels, which can be helpful. Sensitive pallets might want to order conservatively as it’s not for the faint of heart.”

One is a review that says nothing about the quality of the food being served, only the random critic’s redundantly obvious opinion. The other critiques the restaurant’s perception of its patrons, feedback they can consider implementing to improve their dining experience.

Note: That’s rather clinical phrasing that I reserve only for what I deem as professional feedback, on request, coming from a professional mindset, not how I’d review my random Thursday night meal. I’m reviewing the former to help a business market a product because they asked me to. I’m reviewing the latter because it really stood out from the crowd, for better or for worse.

My opposition did not see the need for any difference. I do.

I was operating under the assumption that my menu testers, being my friends and fellow chefs, would take into account that the meal was still being workshopped, as this is why they’re here. That they’d set aside their dislike of my choice in flavor profile because they weren’t an off-the-street dinner guest, and that, as friends, they’d be more lenient with me than the random restaurant down the road. I’d do this for them without hesitation, and I have.

Or, that as my request for feedback had no rush or deadline, that either critic would wait for me to deliver the finished product, tell me they were going to wait for the finished product, or frame their opinion with the understanding of them refusing to do either. Or, simply, decline to give a public opinion.

I was super wrong. Horrifically, catastrophically wrong in all of these assumptions.

Lesson learned: We do not ask people who didn’t finish the final meal for their public opinions, degree of friendship is moot.

To be fair to myself: I never actually asked one of them because I knew they didn’t like it, this whole thing blew up over an unsolicited hypothetical that they ardently defended… after only eating half the meal.

To be further fair to myself: Of my four menu testers, two had the exact same mindset as myself in all of this, leaving the two picky contrarians.

Of course my work is imperfect. It will always be imperfect. If perfection is an impossible standard one will never reach, I lower my standards for what I think is “good enough, as it’s ever going to be” and judge art by what it is, and what it has, not what it’s missing or what I wish it had that it never promised me. I never expected 100% boot-kissing praise. I expected criticism of the things I can fix, not what I chose to leave out.

It’s absolutely fine if “what I choose to leave out” makes or breaks it for a stranger and a casual audience. We all have superficial reasons for not enjoying art. From friends, I hoped they’d ignore that, and I was wrong. So hearing “it was as good as it’s ever going to be and it did everything right… but I don’t like it on principle” felt way more like a slap in the face than “I liked it, mostly, and here is where I think it fell short”.

Doubly so when words like “integrity” and “egotistical” started getting thrown around… over a metaphorical Yelp review that no one should be taking so seriously.

And when that criticism comes from digesting only part of a work with an air of superiority like my objections were immature and entitled, when they had no idea nor desire to learn if their issues with the piece were in fact addressed in the finished product, yes, I was upset.

I definitely did not handle this with the grace and tact I would have with a clearer head. It wasn’t about my perception of perfection. It was that I kept hearing that no matter how good of a chef I might one day become, it will never be good enough to satisfy them and that their saying so in a public forum is something I’d have to live with.

It was the immediate lecture I recieved over a misunderstanding. It was the righteous attitude that rejected any possibility of both arguments having strengths and weaknesses, just different ones.

It was that where I fell short was on a deliberate choice I made intentionally, and because of that, I’d failed in their eyes. Not because I executed that choice poorly, but because the choice itself is something they don’t like, when it was already established that they might not like it.

“Hi, friend, I would like help testing my Thai menu, I know it’s not up your alley, but you’re a chef, too, so would you try it anyway for the elements that do appeal to you and focus on those?”

“I don’t like Thai food and I’m not going to be able to separate the two, I think you should ask someone else.”

“Heard, thank you for your honesty.”

How different things might’ve been. I did actually get that response from someone else and we’re all good. Don’t like? Don’t eat.

It’s unknown whether their opinions would have improved upon taking the full piece in its entirety (probably not, they’re a tough crowd and there are other matters at play here). It’s the determination to declare that by not doing that, they are correct, absolute, and uncompromising in their opinions that is the sticking point.

And to that, I already knew nothing I could say will change their minds, but the guilt is gone. Yes, yes I already knew “can’t control other people or how they see you” but the guilt and frustration of my perceived failure (and my imposter syndrome) to do so just. Poof.

Things were said and are now known that can’t be unsaid or unknown and it’s a bit of an unsettling place to be, but I got my answer and can actually believe it when I hear, “if you wouldn’t take someone’s criticism, don’t take their advice”.

There are inevitably underlying issues here. I consulted multiple other sources — other ‘chefs’, professional menu designers with varying degrees of familiarity with myself — presenting both arguments without revealing which side I believed in a desperate attempt to understand what unwritten sin I’d committed so horribly for the backlash that I received… and still these two contrarians remained just them.

None of this reflects how I approach art from a stranger, if that’s not clear. I owe strangers nothing, but at the same time, I only give public opinion when something has gone horribly wrong, or I want to help a small business and they’ve asked for my feedback. Reviews are, after all, marketing, and marketing is a numbers game when algorithms are behind everything.

At the end of the day, yes, I’m lenient, and I will stand by that and stop apologizing for it. Critics can be harsh, petty, and biased as hell by their current mood, their opinion of the artist, or some statement they want to make either with their praise or criticism. Feedback is hard to come by and many reviews are only given when something goes wrong or fails to meet expectations, however impossible.

And if an anonymous critic is going to be biased against someone trying to make it alone out there, who has asked for support, I’m going to give that support to them, biased in their favor, because I want to help as a counterbalance. I’m treating them how I’d want to be treated. If that makes me dishonest, so be it.

To those who find time to write in between two jobs and the second shift

To those whose work is scattered between journals, napkins, and Walmart receipts

To those who still doubt themselves, and keep chasing perfection like a mirage in the desert

To those who are saving up the money to publish, one fistful of dollars at a time

To those who don’t have connections, shouting into the void

To those who write in a genre that few appreciate

To those in a saturated market trying to stand out

To those suffering writer’s block, and have been for years

To those on a creative high, writing like a fiend

To those still stuck on the first page

To those in the final lap, sprinting at the home stretch

To those who have whole fantasy worlds in their head, but no confidence to share them

To those who dream of their characters and change their whole plan to fit a new idea

To those on their fifth book with still only three loyal readers

To those who are convinced the right reader will come

To those waiting on the one reader to be a catalyst for recognition

To those who think they can’t make it

To those who have

To those who are one more ignored query from throwing it all away

To those who’ve only ever heard they’ll never be good enough

To women, queers, writers of color, young, old, and all in between

To all with a story to tell

You can do this!

As an indie author myself, today marks release day for my second book, a novella about merfolk, and the conservation of coral reefs. Check it out here if you’d like.

There’s a scene in season 5 of My Hero Academia where two beloved teachers have been brought to some high security prison to interrogate a captured villain that turns out to be a brainwashed childhood friend of theirs. The scene is really dramatic. These two teachers are screaming at this guy, heartbroken, and when I saw the episode (shortly before quitting the entire show mid-episode over how bored I was) I was not at all as outraged and horrified as they were.

It was so tonally jarring, and so unfounded within the plot, that it was almost uncomfortable to watch. The villain they’re interrogating isn’t unfamiliar, but the plot-twist-surprise childhood friend is a stranger no one but these two care about.

I didn’t care, couldn’t empathize with why they were upset, knew nothing about their relationship with the guy beyond the ham-handed flashbacks given right that moment. I wasn’t prepared to mourn the loss of this random character, wasn’t primed ahead of time with the idea that this was a possibility to dread the scene before it happened. I was just waiting for it to be over and when it finally was, the impact it had on me was a resounding: Well that was weird. Now back to the plot.

Unfounded sincerity is the uncomfortably ugly step-sibling of plots that are starved of sincerity — look at most of Phase 4, but really, starting with Thor: Ragnarok in the MCU. Many Marvel properties are afraid to embrace the emotional moments and resort to bad jokes to laugh at themselves before the audience can laugh at them. Because how dare a late-stage superhero story about mythical gods be at all sincere in its relationships, its quiet moments, its tragedies. Nope, time for jokes.

Unfounded sincerity is when a story goes far harder with the drama, the love-declarations, the angst, the humor, where it’s trying really hard to convince the audience to care and it just isn’t working.

This happens when arguments start out of nowhere, as well, when characters explode at each other in a heated screaming match that hasn’t been left to fester for nearly long enough, undercooked and hard to swallow.

This happens when characters fall suddenly, madly in love with each other with zero dubious intervention to explain away the sudden passion.

It happens particularly when characters care a whole heck of a lot about someone the audience doesn’t, at the expense of characters the audience is invested in.

It happens when characters have emotional breakdowns and start crying over what ends up reading like spilled milk. When stoic and strong characters break over something they normally would never, for ~drama~.

This is usually both a tone and pacing issue, and a serious case of telling. The author hasn’t done any of the work ramping up a situation or relationship for proper delivery of these emotionally charged moments that are written like critical character beats we’re supposed to care deeply about.

So how does this happen?

1. The author really wants this scene, but writes it too early into the story

Unless there’s foul play involved, or this is a romantic comedy that isn’t supposed to be a realistic and healthy depiction of how romance works, characters suddenly declaring love for each other at the cost of their own well-being, their own character arc and journey, and their other motivations can be very frustrating to read.

But the author wants to get to the Good Stuff, so they coast on the “male + female leads = relationship” expectation without writing the why. Or the male + male leads” or what have you.

2. The author cannot fluidly change tone and characters explode, instead of simmer

An argument that comes out of nowhere can really take your audience out of a scene. Your characters suddenly look ridiculous and your audience can’t follow what’s going on or why they’re so upset. This is different than a character exploding seemingly out of nowhere, but who we know has been building resentment for dozens of pages and loses it over something otherwise inconsequential.

These scenes are painfully, obviously there for manufactured drama and don’t feel natural. These characters don’t feel like people, but playthings, action figures manipulated by the hands of the author.

3. The characters involved are underdeveloped

As in the My Hero scene mentioned above, of the three characters in the scene, the “friend” we’re supposed to care about is a non-entity. The two teachers could have lost their minds over this guy’s sudden death, or the reveal that he turned traitor, or that he murdered younglings and puppies and kittens, to the same emotional impact, because we don’t care about this guy (or, I don’t, at least. I didn’t, and shouldn’t have to read the manga).

You can of course have characters who grieve non-entities, like the fridged wife trope. The difference is the audience knows we’re not supposed to know or care about that lady and the character she never was. This happens pre-plot, not mid-season 5. The frigid wife is the catalyst for the character we then come to know, not a character whose death radically changes our heroes from the people we’ve already established.

4. The tonal jump is just too extreme from the established rules of the story

Abrupt changes in tone can be very tricky to pull off, and almost always fail when it surrounds an abrupt shift in character dynamics (as opposed to something more plot-related). As in, your lighthearted comedy suddenly stops the plot so two characters can scream at each other, when this level of emotional charge hasn’t been established as a possibility.

Or the aforementioned emotional breakdown that just leaves audiences uncomfortable like the awkward friend trying to soothe a weeping companion.

Unfortunately, the fixes to these situations are either delete that entire scene, or go back and do a lot of rewriting so there’s enough build-up to justify its existence. Go back and write in that simmering resentment, all the little frustrations, a pre-existing tension within the relationship that is always primed to snap.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder and there’s a reason the “slowburn” is so popular. Setting out from the beginning to write a fast-paced, passionate romance tells your readers to expect exaggerated displays of emotion.

My favorite musical is Moulin Rouge. This movie is insane. Everyone is hyperbolically emotional and nothing is half-assed. The dances, the belting singing, the costumes, set-design, editing, the declarations of love — they’re all dialed up to 11. So characters screaming their love or rage from the rooftops is a lot but you’re prepared for it from the opening scene, knowing exactly what kind of movie this is.

Even if you don’t start your story with the level of drama it will eventually reach, there should still be some sort of progression when it comes to character drama.

Last Airbender (animated) didn’t open episode 2 with the emotional intensity of Zuko and Azula’s last Agni Kai… but it did show you that this isn’t just a lighthearted comedy in episode 3, with the reveal of Gyatso’s body and Aang’s violently emotional reaction.

Speaking of episode 3, they didn’t throw in Gyatso out of nowhere. We know from the show so far that a) Aang is the last of his kind, and b) he doesn’t know this. Everything leading up to this reveal is lighthearted, sure, but with that undercurrent of dread, waiting for Aang to see for himself, waiting for that other shoe to drop.

So some things to keep in mind are:

• Prime the audience with dropping that first shoe, make them aware of the building tension (romantic, aggressive, grief, or otherwise), even if not all the characters are aware.
• Build that tension. If your characters will eventually explode, let them be mildly irritated first, then annoyed, then frustrated, then angry, then raging until they can’t contain it anymore.
• Make sure every party involved in this dramatic moment is someone the audience actually cares about, not just someone they’re told to care about.

TL;DR: Don’t pull the trigger prematurely. It’s most obvious with suddenly passionate arguments, characters flinging insults and hurts the audience isn’t prepared for and doesn’t know about, in effort to move the plot along before it’s fully cooked.

So unless there’s some drugs or fairy magic involved, or one of these characters has a gun to their head forcing them to do this right now, people don’t just explode in a rage without some buildup first. People can explode in a rage over a seemingly inconsequential and unrelated thing, but they’re likely already upset and this one little thing is the final straw. Audiences love the anticipation of what that final straw will be, and whether the explosive drama is rage or romance, “slowburn” is immensely popular for a reason.

Check out my debut dark fantasy novel Eternal Night of the Northern Sky and my upcoming contemporary merfolk mystery novella Tell Me How Long.

Fantasy knows no bounds, it can encompass all other genres within it. You can write a fantastical murder mystery, fantasy horror, fantasy romance, political drama, slice-of-life, comedy, whatever you’d like!

Whether it’s urban or high fantasy, supernatural or scientific, here’s seven great benefits of writing in this genre:

1. No modern means of communication

Unless you’re writing a world with phones or phone-adjacent devices. Phones and instant communication seriously inhibits the plausibility of dramatic irony and tension when you have to keep coming up with reasons to keep your characters from calling or texting each other everything they know. It’s exhausting, I tell you, and such a relief when phones aren’t a factor.

With that said, without phones, you have complete freedom to design your own magical channels of supernatural Zoom, as weird and zany as you want. But without instant connections? Your character who knew too much can’t pass on the intel before they die. Your hero team can’t call for backup in their darkest hour. Otherwise easily preventable tragedies and deadly miscommunications are now very real.

2. The Monster Allegory

Fantasy and sci-fi tend to overlap more than they’re set apart, and in that overlap sits the monster allegory. Everything from werewolves to vampires to witches, reapers, demons, angels, zombies, goblins, trolls, wraiths, fairies, mermaids, ghosts, to Eldritch horrors and your classic Hollywood cast of mummies, creatures from the black lagoon, and Frankenstein.

Most of the time, the monsters aren’t just monsters, they represent a monstrous aspect of society the author wants to challenge and caricaturize in a fun and entertaining way. Or, the monsters are the good guys and the humans are the real terrors. Or, you’ve got two kinds of monsters to allegory two human sides. Sometimes they represent metaphorical demons, like vampires often representing addiction and werewolves repressed identities.

What all of this boils down to is the hyperbolic nature of science fantasy that allows you to go over-the-top with your metaphor and allegory in a way that a book grounded in reality just can’t.

3. Magic Systems!

Do you love world building? Do you love filling pages upon pages with your cool and unique set of superpowers you want your characters to have? Do you dream about your fight scenes and dramatic slow-mo shots?

Then Fantasy is for you!

There are zero limits to how you want to define your magic system. You can go classic with the familiar archetypes of elemental magic, wizards, sorcerers, and witches. Or you can step off the beaten path and design a whole new funky system of power sets. Best part? Your readers will have an awesome time imagining themselves with those powers, and debating endlessly about how it works.

4. Real-World Politics, who?

Amazon’s Rings of Power was twice-doomed when they only got the rights to adapt the appendices of The Silmarillion and when they decided to inject current political problems into a timeless story written purposefully to be divorced from those politics. You can write about human politics, but in fantasy, you don’t have to. You can interpret Lord of the Rings to be an allegory about the World Wars, but no matter how hard you argue, it wasn’t written with that intent.

Which means: Even if your story is set in the reality-adjacent fantasy version of 1543, you are free from the following: Racism, homophobia, sexism, religious bigotry, mental health bigotry, gender norms, anti-feminism, toxic masculinity, and more.

“But that’s how it was-”

Nope. This is fantasy. You built this world, you decided to keep in the discrimination. Or… You can fill your fantasy world with a rainbow of gays, POCs in power, women in power, men unafraid to be compassionate and caring, a religion that doesn’t foster hate and division, the list goes on. You. Are. Free.

5. Nothing is too “unrealistic”

Both that you will always have people whining about how X would never happen so write the book you want to read, but also because fantasy is fake. Fairies aren’t real. Mermaids aren’t real. There are no rules for how they must be written and that’s how we have so much variety with so much room for interpretation by so many creators. Twilight made how much money writing about vampires that sparkle like diamonds in sunlight and crack like marble?

This is fantasy, it’s supposed to be unrealistic. Yes, your plot should make sense, but don’t be afraid to get weird. Write at least some of your story dependant on those fantasy elements. Write a story that can’t just be told in the real world minus the spectacle. Don’t be afraid to be sincerely fantastical and weird. People love weird. People love loving weird.

6. You are in complete control

But you do still need to research, unfortunately. Unless this is urban fantasy that depends at least a little on the human world, yours is completely your own to govern like a god tweezing weeds from their garden. You get to design your own geography and weather patterns and seasons. Your own countries and kingdoms and politicians. Your epic pre-canon fantasy war and the stakes that it was fought over. Your species, races, and ethnicities.

It’s a shame that a movie like Avatar (2009) set out to be this wholly unique take on aliens with music completely divorced from earthly bonds, new languages and a visually and culturally distinct alien species… and ended up a largely generic blue Pocahontas in space. It forgot that it was fantasy and didn’t go weird enough. They have horses, monkeys, wolves, rhinos, and deer just re-skinned with some extra limbs and colors. It’s pretty but it’s so, so shallow.

It could have become a cult classic like many a positively weird 80s off-beat fantasies, and now it just… exists. It makes a whole lot of money but its impact on the cultural zeitgeist is negligible. I’m the only person I know that can name every major character in the movie, and I’m no Avatar obsessor. They had complete creative control, and this is what they did with it. Don’t be Avatar. Take your creative freedom and run.

7. Even if it has been done before, do it again

You can say this about any genre, particularly romance, but fantasy and sci-fi, by the gatekeep-y nature of their fans, can be a lot less forgiving when it comes to claims of “unoriginality”. No one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans.

But Game of Thrones exists because the author likes Lord of the Rings and went “yes, but what if it was an R-rated parade of misery?” Dungeons and Dragons exists because people wanted to roleplay in an LotR-esque world. Legolas and Gimli single-handedly defined what a badass elf and dwarf looks like in high fantasy. And people still gobble up media ripping shamelessly, or even good-naturedly, from this one story.

So on my other list, I argued that the sum of your parts is still original, even if the components aren’t. On this list, I implore you this: It’s not stealing or appropriating to write another Legolas if you love Legolas. Everyone loves Legolas. How many generic buff action heroes do we have and love? How many Hallmark romances tread the same predictable path? Who gives a damn if it’s unoriginal? Just make it entertaining and have something fresh to say in the end (or don’t, that’s fine too), and people will read it.

And when people say “Oh, you mean like Legolas”, take it as a compliment, not an insult. Yes, exactly like Legolas. Here’s my new elf because I adore this other book, now watch him go on a new adventure that I wrote for him.

Click for Part 1!

Check out my debut dark fantasy novel Eternal Night of the Northern Sky and my upcoming contemporary merfolk mystery novella Tell Me How Long.

Me handing out character dynamics like free samples at the Mall Food Court: “Take one! Or two! You’ll love it!”

I don’t care how many times these tropes have been done — write more of them. Write all of them. Fill out your author bingo card one by one.

1. “No one gets to kill you but me, Old Friend”

This. Right here. Primo rival content that I live for. All the juicy history between two old frenemies, the character drama, the backstory, the titillating unknown of what drove these two to rival status, bitter enemies that respect the heck out of each other, to the point that hell hath no fury should one get knocked down without the other’s consent.

And, of course, the moment where it seems all bets are off, when the rival comes to save their ass only to hand it back to them at a later date. The angst! The shipping fodder! Need I say more?

2. A bigger, badder villain, and their minion

You, reader, spend countless hours hating the guts of the big bad villain. They’re evil, they’re vile, they’re sadistic, heartless, irredeemable bastards. They killed your favorite character for shock value. The big bad moustache-twirling antagonist… is actually not the biggest fish in the story.

Either they’re coerced into doing evil as a puppet of the Bigger Bad, a tragic villain in their own right, or they have some reservation, some line even they won’t cross, someone else’s boots they have to kiss, someone who features in their nightmares, as they feature in the heroes. They end their stories dispatched without a thought by the Bigger Bad, or redeem themselves in death by taking out their masters. It never gets old.

3. A leader and their lancer: besties

You know what’s better than leaders and lancers who have zero faith in each other and are constantly bickering about who should be in charge? Leaders and their right-hands who adore each other (platonically). They have each other’s backs, they know each other’s greatest strengths and weaknesses and are each other’s perfect covers.

They can communicate with looks and vague gestures alone, they compliment each other’s flaws and misgivings, build up the rest of the team when they’re down on their luck, and should misfortune strike either, they pull out all the stops and show off exactly why they’re not to be trifled with, so that even the villain is afraid.

4. “I don’t even know who you are”

Oh, but you will. This one twists the knife, robbing the avenging hero of the importance in this world they’re desperate to maintain. They are their own hero, the sun revolves around them… but not to this one asshat that ruined their life and doesn’t even remember doing it.

An entire identity built upon the finding, fighting, and overcoming of this wrongdoer, every other goal in life cast aside for this one impossibility. Either the villain toys with the hero to make them irate, or gets suckerpunched by some pissant fueled by vengeance and spite and divine purpose to dole justice where justice is due.

6. The jaded badass and their naive ward

If the last 8 years of media is anything to go by, we still love this trope, whether it’s in a galaxy far, far away or a fungi-zombie post-apocalypse, or in the twilight hours of an era of legendary mutants. The best part of this trope? You get two often contradictory character types in one body. The pessimist, PTSD-ridden master of old with no living friends left and at least one dead love interest and beneath all that, still lies an atrophied heart of gold just waiting to be nurtured and revived.

The naive ward gets a hard lesson in how crappy the world can be, but also in how there’s still some goodness left, if their guardian cares about them. The jaded badass in turn, learns how good the world can be, that there’s something still worth fighting for beyond the next bottom of a bottle.

6. The enemy of my enemy (is my friend)

Similar to the “old friends”, this trope is often a result of the minioned Big Bad realizing they don’t want to be evil anymore. Or, bitter old rivals, sides of a war that have been fighting for generations, ideological polar opposites, fundamental polar opposites all come together when: Some evil schmuck managed to scare them both.

Doesn’t matter on what shaky ground this temporary alliance is built, or how long it lasts, equally-competent badasses on both sides finally work together and compliment each other’s strengths, and compensate for their weaknesses, in a way their teammates never could.

7. The irredeemable villain’s only wholesome connection

Not so irredeemable anymore, now are they? This trope messes with your head, taking a character you know has done heinous acts of terror, but who cares unflinchingly, unabashedly, about one thing — either their lover, their pet, their relative, or their kid.

This exists independently of the heroes and is not the same as an “oops I guess I’m your father” reveal. I’m talking this character who everyone is convinced cares about nothing and no one but themselves and their ambition still has a place in their soul for something they want to protect, they want to be loved by, or that they must spare from their atrocities.

8. Platonic Heterosexual Friendships

These two have seen each other at their most vulnerable. They’ve shared fears, dreams, desires, know each other’s deepest, darkest secrets. They’ve seen each other exhausted, frazzled, dressed up, dressed down, bloodied and broken and like a raw, open nerve. These two would die for each other, they would live for each other, and yet.

They’re not in love with each other. They’re wholly comfortable in each other’s spaces without lust and desire mucking up the atmosphere. Neither is the one, neither wants to be the one. They remain together not for the bonds of romance, but for the bonds of friendship, and nothing could be stronger.

10. The Ace and their best friend, the Self-Proclaimed Slut

These two respect the f*ck out of each other. One never mocks the other for lacking desire and in return, they’re never mocked for their promiscuity. They’ll never walk in each other’s shoes, but they don’t need to, to understand that’s just how some people are. They’re each other’s safest spaces when the world doesn’t take either of them seriously.

They’re each other’s biggest defenders against the bullies, presumers, the holier-than-thous who think they have it all figured out. They’re the perfect compliment to give advice on everything from relationships to the best outfits for an outing because there’s zero sexual tension between them. Or, maybe, if the stars align, they’re something more.

10. The redeeming villain, and their staunchest skeptic

This villain has lost everything — their home, the respect of their people, their worth, their evil ambition, their identity, and has begun working their way up from rock bottom doing everything in their power to show the heroes that they’re serious. They make amends, they break their bones proving themselves, they’ve swayed everyone they’ve wronged in the hero camp.

Except one. The one character that was probably their first defender, and got burned for it. The character that was naive enough to think this villain could be saved, and was wrong. The character that won’t be duped again without some serious drama and soul-bearing between them.

Check out my debut dark fantasy novel Eternal Night of the Northern Sky and my upcoming contemporary merfolk mystery novella Tell Me How Long.

This is for self-published authors, somewhat, I didn’t go through the agent/publishing house process, but I did give it a try.

1. Thinking everyone you work with will like your book

I wasn’t under this illusion, but I did assume that every beta reader that I worked with would be able to stay objective, i.e. saying while they don’t like an element they think it still works instead of “I don’t like this” with no explanation. Which was not the case. If this happens, best thing to do is to cut your losses. They’re not your target audience.

2. Underestimating how long it takes

Your book baby is your top priority and yours alone. Everyone else that you could work with does so at their pace on their schedules. I wrote Eternal Night in one month. It took almost six months of beta readers and a professional edit for a lot of reasons, but largely in part due to betas just not being very speedy. In other areas, too. I didn’t query it because my first experience trying to work with publishing houses was a lot of “hurry up and wait” and I did not have time to wait 6+ months, with exclusive submissions, just to be told no.

3. Underestimating how much it costs

I had funds prepared and set aside in a savings account to pay the editor that I knew would be the steepest cost of the whole writing process. I’d saved up over a couple months and was virtually unaffected by the exorbitant fee when the bill came due because I had prepared. Betas and editors cost money, and you can’t skimp on those otherwise you’re just burning money. If you hire illustrators or promoters, they eat up cash. Formatting, too, costs money. If I wanted to break even with ENNS, I would have to sell over a thousand copies. Just to break even. Even if you do it all yourself, of which I did my own illustrations and formatting, the programs I used cost money, and time.

4. Vetting book promoters

It’s my personal opinion that anyone who will promote any book for money does not have an opinion worth trusting. Do I think my book is good? Absolutely. Do I think every book they promote is good? No. Nor do these influencers seem to care about anything more than profit. I wouldn’t buy a product based on a review without integrity, and have learned a hard lesson in trying to undo that mistake. If you just want word out, then you can act without discretion and just pick the cheapest influencers. But their word means nothing if they’ll sell it to the lowest bidder.

5. Putting all your eggs in one marketing basket

Marking as an author, if you don’t come from a marketing background, can be more exhausting and defeating than any one piece of the writing process. A mistake I’ve realized only far after the above points is dismissing one platform or another without considering all possible avenues.

Instagram doesn’t let you schedule posts with a standard account, and I’ve let my author insta stagnate because manually posting every couple of days is some bs. TikTok/BookTok was a challenge for a different reason: I’m not great with visual social media and I’m not a “romantacy” author who can crawl out from under the shadow of a certain series. I’m a writer, not a tiktoker, and filming and editing something I deemed high enough quality was too much. So I put all my efforts into my Tumblr account, and unfortunately, getting engagement and visibility there nowadays is tough.

So I’m here, back on Medium now that I’ve found a gimmick for the graphics, and on Bluesky now that it exists so I can avoid X. I have my own website, I’ve got business cards, and I’ve got full link-integration for all my odds and ends through LinkTree.

Is this the magic combo? I don’t yet know. But I’m now using the platforms that I want to and that I’m good at, not forcing myself to suffer on platforms I hate. Now, it’s kind of fun again.

—

These are five things I didn’t quite think about going in. I’ve been a writer for almost 10 years now but this was my first time all the way through the publication process and it was a wake up call in many areas, especially with the bad actors on social media.

But the bottom line is this: Don’t underestimate the cost of the process, whether that cost be money or time or simply stress. Writing is easy. Publishing is work.

Check out my debut dark fantasy novel Eternal Night of the Northern Sky and my upcoming contemporary merfolk mystery novella Tell Me How Long.