As an aside, I have all of these questions already answered for my main characters and more so. A fully fleshed out main character is paramount to a story. Even if you never use the fact that your main character loves the color orange and collects My Little Ponies® while loathing the very sight of cut flowers, you have those quirks in your subconscious and can use them to explain away why they hated the picture of flowers in a vase or why they noticed the orange car.
HINTS, TRICKS, AND TIPS
No author works in a vacuum—at least, not the good ones. To know how NPCs should act to be real, look around you to see how the NPCs in your life act. Thus, I have a series of activities to use to allow your NPCs to come to life in a way that makes them realistic while not running away with the scene.
Make a list. Make a list of people you interact with but do not really talk to on a day-to-day basis. These people can include baristas, bus drivers, mailmen, couriers, taxi drivers, shopkeepers, grocery store cashiers and baggers—the list goes on. Think about each of these people and what you know about them even if you haven't really spoken to them. The courier obviously works out based on his physique. The barista is in school based on the book she reads in her down time. The bagger had a bad fall based on her limp and it was probably due to skiing based on the ski tag dangling from her jacket. When you sit and think about it, your subconscious picks up on a lot of clues you are not consciously aware of. You know more about the people around you than you think you do. These people are the NPCs in your life. You can take this experience and use it in your writing.
NPC note cards are your friend. When I am writing a game or a story and I need a lot of NPCs I need to keep distinct and separate, I use my NPC note cards. This is a stack of note cards with a bunch of readymade NPCs on them. Each of my note cards has a name, gender, occupation, basic description and answers to the first five questions listed above. I make these note cards based on the NPCs in my life—who I live near, who I interact with, who I observe and, occasionally, random people on the street who catch my eye.
Yes, I break the rule about not using friends and family but I rarely, if ever, link a real name with a real background on an NPC card. Frequently, I will also change the gender of the person I am basing the NPC on. The biggest trick to using people you know as NPCs is to take one or two aspects of that person and exaggerate them to the point of obfuscation. This is part of writing what (or who, in this case) you know.
Eavesdrop in a public place. Sometimes it is hard to come up with a readymade personality on the fly. Even when basing NPCs on people you know, you need extra inspiration. The best and easiest way to do this is to go to a public place like a mall, coffee shop, or any other place where people congregate—airports, subway stations or the DMV—and eavesdrop. Listen to whom they talk to and how. Watch how the ticket taker deals with the public or the teenage girl works the counter. Does she smile or frown? Listen to how people talk to each other. It certainly isn't in formal language. Half the time, conversations between people, even strangers, is in a kind of verbal shorthand. Watch how they speak with gestures as much as they do with language. You can take all of that and use it in your writing. It is just one more way of making your NPCs as real as possible.
Also, as a side note, eavesdropping on conversations can give you all sorts of interesting ideas for stories. And overheard secret or misunderstood comment can blossom into the best storylines that you would never have thought up on your own. There is no shame in public eavesdropping. After all, these are real people with ‘stranger than fiction’ lives. The only thing you may have to do is tone down the weirdness on what you overhear. My editors would not let me use a lot of what I actually overhear because it is too outrageous to believe. Real life doesn't have to make sense but your fiction does.
In the end, your NPCs can be your most important asset to help tell your story. They can impart information to the reader, move your story along, help show important aspects of the main character that you might not otherwise be able to show, can help describe what is going on around the main characters and set the tone for the scene. NPCs are people, too, and worthy of your consideration.
Tropes of the Trade
Ari Marmell
Let’s talk tropes.
If you do any reading or socializing in groups of writers—or even die-hard readers—you’ve heard people refer to “tropes.” These are, in the most basic terms, common concepts of the genre. The “Chosen One,” prophesied to bring down an ancient evil, is a trope. The all-powerful object that everyone’s after, such as the One Ring—what Hitchcock referred to as the McGuffin—is a trope. The standard array of fantasy races—human, elf, dwarf, hobbit/halfling—popularized by Tolkien and then Dungeons & Dragons is a trope. Tropes can be plot points, setting details, basic descriptions, what have you.
“But Ari,” you might say, “isn’t that just another word for ‘cliché’? Don’t you want to try to be original and avoid those?”
To which I might respond, “I can’t hear you. You’re talking to a book, you turkey.”
But if I could hear you, what I might say is this:
Originality is great—as a tool for writing good stories and creating compelling characters, or as a byproduct thereof. It should never be your goal; your goals should be, well, writing a good story and creating compelling characters.
And for that, tropes are just another tool in the writer’s toolkit. Like any tool, you want to avoid them when they aren’t right for the job, but you absolutely want to make full use of them when they are.
They’re the right tool for the job a surprising amount of the time.
(For purposes of this essay, I’m going to gloss over one of the single most important traits of tropes in fantasy, which is, quite simply, that lots of people like them. Just as audiences often gravitate toward food that’s similar to what they already like, or TV shows similar to the ones they already watch, many people find delight—or at least comfort—in novels that have lots of traits in common with those they’ve already read. There’s a reason that many tropes are tropes, and it’s because people enjoy seeing them. It’s why so many heroes follow common archetypes: the valorous knight, the brooding loner, the farm boy with a destiny. It’s why so many books contain the same basic races, or are clearly based on Medieval Europe when there are so many other fascinating cultures to explore or create. But while this is a vital point to remember, and one of the best reasons not to eschew the use of tropes, this knowledge doesn’t help you understand when, how, or why to use said tropes in your writing. Thus, it’s an interesting but not particularly useful observation for our purposes.)
TROPES AS SHORTHAND
“What’s your name, child?” asked the voice from behind.
“T-Tyannon, my lord.”
“Tyannon.” The name rolled around in the speaker’s mouth, as though tasting it for imperfections. “And why am I speaking to the back of your head, Tyannon?”
“B-because I’m f-facing the other way, my lord?”
Most of the captives, and indeed several of the guards, gasped in disbelief, and the young woman tensed in expectation of a sudden blow. After a moment of silence, however, a soft chuckle was the only response.
Then, “Turn around, Tyannon.”
Her shoulders slumping, as if she’d consigned herself to whatever fate the gods might hold in store, she obeyed.
The figure looming before her came straight from one of the fairy tales she read to Jass every night—one of the darker ones. Shorter than his ogre minions, he nonetheless loomed over her, filling the entirety of her vision. A demonic suit of armor concealed his body, head to toe: midnight black steel, with thick plates of bone that gleamed unnaturally white in the orange glow of the lanterns. From small spines of bone on his shoulders hung a heavy cloak of royal purple, a coincidental match to the regent’s banner on the fields outside. The flickering lanterns sent his shadow dancing across the walls, as though guided by some mad puppeteer. Atop it all
, a helm of bone, a skull bound in iron bands. Nothing human showed through the grim façade, no soul peered from the gaping black holes in the mask.
With a desperate surge of will, the young woman pulled her gaze away from the hideous mask, glancing downward instead. Her eyes fixed momentarily on the chain about his neck. It dipped down beneath the bone-covered breastplate, linked perhaps to some pendant or amulet she couldn’t see. Her eyes traveled lower still, to the large double-bladed axe upon which his gauntlet rested. It stood upright, butt of the handle upon the ground. The blade was adorned with minuscule engravings—abstract shapes that gave the impression, though not the detail, of thousands of figures engaged in the cruelest, most brutal acts of war. Tyannon whimpered quietly as she saw that there were worse things to stare at than the blackened eye sockets of the helm. Things like that axe, and the figures engraved upon it, figures that seemed almost to move on their own, independent from the dancing torchlight… (from The Conqueror’s Shadow, prologue, Spectra, 2009)
The dark-armored evil warlord would certainly qualify as a trope, if ever there was one. As soon as the reader sees this, he or she knows, to an extent, what to expect. It’s been drummed into the audience for years. Darth Vader; Lord Soth; the Nazgûl, more or less; Sauron himself, if we’re talking about the opening of The Fellowship of the Ring movie; Doctor Doom, from Marvel Comics.
And, in my own novel, Corvis Rebaine. When we first meet Corvis, he’s in full-on warlord mode, at the height of his power as the “Terror of the East.” And we meet him, not really as a human being, but as an imposing suit of black armor, complete with spines of bone and a skull-shaped helm. It’s clearly intended to be intimidating more than to actually function in combat. (Any swordsman will tell you that spines on armor just help guide weapons in.) But while that armor sends a message to the people he’s conquering—“Be afraid”—the message it sends to the reader is “You already know, in part, who and what this guy is.”
It’s that last bit that we’re focusing on here. That description does more than tell the reader what Corvis looks like; because it builds on a common trope, it tells the reader a great deal about his personality and even his goals in a very brief span of time. It’s not enough, by itself; relying on tropes without plot/character development to back them up, is where you drift into the realm of cliché. (More on that in a bit.) But it’s a useful start.
Essentially, I’ve used the “villainous black knight” trope as a shorthand language to convey far more information than the description alone. You’ll find, I think, that tropes are used this way more often than almost any other; as a secondary language—the “body language” of written text, if you will—to add a layer of meaning that the words themselves don’t necessarily carry.
Those heroic archetypes I mentioned above? They all serve this purpose. The archetypes aren’t enough, in and of themselves; you have to expand on them, delve into them. But by establishing what sort of hero you’re writing about, you immediately give the reader a basis from which to start building their picture of the character—and to an extent, the entire story.
That said, the shorthand language of tropes isn’t limited to individual characters; it can be used to tell the reader about the world, or even the purpose of a story. If a tale refers to nobles as kings, queens, dukes, barons, etc.; if it involves fortified castles, or a monolithic Church; if it involves knights in armor on heavy warhorses; then it’s most likely based on Medieval Europe, and this, in turn, often tells the reader what other societal details to expect. The presence of armored knights doesn’t require the existence of a traditional feudal monarchy; a monolithic religious institution doesn’t have to be modeled on the Roman Catholic Church. But while such associations aren’t automatic, they’re certainly more common than not.
Lots of stories—Star Wars being perhaps the most famous example—deliberately follow the model of Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth” (also known as the “Hero’s Journey”). Many stories follow this archetype to a greater or lesser extent, but those that do so overtly and deliberately are making use of well established tropes in their structure. Heck, their structure arguably is a trope unto itself. As soon as you start seeing these tropes appear—“the call to adventure,” “refusal of the call,” “supernatural aid,” and so forth (largely in that order)—then the author has already told you, at least in very broad terms, what sort of tale to expect and what sort of emotions he or she is trying to evoke.
TROPES AS DECEPTION
He wasn’t an especially conspicuous figure, not like in his younger days. He was taller than average—taller than most of the men in the village, certainly. In his prime, he’d been mountainous, his body covered with layers of rock-solid muscle; even Xavier, Renfro’s large son, was a delicate flower compared to what this man once had been.
Middle age stole that from him, though a combination of strict exercise and natural inclination saved him from going to fat, as so many former men of war inevitably did. He was, in fact, quite wiry now, slender to the point of gaunt. His face was one of edges and angles, striking without being handsome, and the gaze of his green eyes piercing. Hair once brown had greyed; it hung just past his neck, giving him a vaguely feral demeanor. Even now he could do the work of a man half his age, but he wasn’t what he used to be.
And his back still hurt.
“Daddy, Daddy!”
The grin that blossomed across his face washed away the pain in his back. Quickly he knelt down, catching the wiggling brown-haired flurry that flung itself into his arms. Standing straight, he cradled the child to his breast, laughing. (from The Conqueror’s Shadow, chapter one)
On the other hand, that exact same shorthand can be used to mislead, rather than inform, in order to hammer home a point or introduce a “swerve” in the story. The above description doesn’t particularly stand out; it’s just an average fellow (albeit one who was quite dangerous in his youth), not uncommon in this sort of fantasy setting.
It’s also the same character described in the previous excerpt, albeit quite some time later—a sharp contrast that works, in part, because of the images and associations that come with the “black knight” trope.
While Corvis is clearly a villain in the first excerpt, he’s actually the protagonist for most of the book. By using a standard trope to hammer home who/what Corvis was seventeen years ago, it makes the transformation into who he is “now” that much more dramatic; the line of demarcation between who he is and who he was that much sharper. If the reader didn’t already have a strong image of Corvis Rebaine as “warlord/black knight,” there wouldn’t be nearly as much punch to seeing him, only a chapter later, as “aging family man.”
In Simon R. Green’s Blue Moon Rising, he begins with the protagonist in a very traditional quest—to rescue a maiden from a dragon—in part as a contrast to the rest of the book, which abruptly turns in a very different direction. (The dragon is peaceful, and the princess is happier here than she was at home, just for starters.)
Just as you can use existing tropes to convey information to the reader, you can also use them to convey a deliberate false impression. Anyone who assumes that the earlier description of Corvis defines who he is for the entire book, for example, is going to find themselves making a quick about-face in the next chapter. It’s a powerful way for writers to play with—and even tweak—reader expectations. (And if that sounds manipulative, well, yeah. That’s what writers do: Manipulate.) You don’t want to out-and-out lie to readers (unless you’re speaking from the point of view of an unreliable character or narrator, of course), but a trope can make the reader think they know what you’re doing while you then build off of it in some other direction.
This technique can be applied to setting and other aspects of storytelling, but it works best when building characters. True heroism is more impressive when it comes from an unexpected source; this sort of “authorial slight-of-hand” allows you to surprise the reader, play with expectations, make a seemingly mundane
or even good-for-nothing character into a genuine hero (or, of course, to prove a seemingly heroic character actually weak and cowardly). Nobody is at all surprised that Luke winds up leading the final attack on the Death Star, because by then, we expected heroics from him. The pivotal reappearance of the “scoundrel” Han Solo, however, has more of an emotional impact—or at least it did, back in the mists of time when the movie was new—precisely because it comes from a less overtly heroic source. Had Han not been played up as a selfish mercenary to that point, his later heroic actions wouldn’t have carried nearly the same impact.
(And he shot first, damn it.)
TROPES AS GENRE
You know what else tropes are really good for? Firmly establishing yourself in the fantasy (or other) genre. In fact, one could argue that they’re essential. What is genre, but the trappings and descriptive details of a story and setting? Certainly, in some genres, what matters is what happens in the story. If you’re writing a romance novel, your story has to be focused on romance; if you’re writing a mystery, your story must have unknown aspects to be investigated and twists to be revealed.
But fantasy? Science-fiction? These are genres defined, for the most part, by details. Does the story have magic? Is it set on a secondary world? Does it include monsters? (It’s possible for the answers to these to be no, and for a story to still be fantasy; but if the answers to these are all yes, then the story, almost by definition, must be fantasy.) The trappings of the setting firmly cement the tale in the fantasy genre, and what are said trappings—in many cases—but the use of the genre’s common tropes?
Of course, there’s some disagreement, as there always will be in any non-scientific field. Heck, this book’s own editor and I have been involved in a rather intense debate as to whether a certain story qualifies as “sword-and-sorcery,” based on the actions and attitudes of the story’s protagonist. (And we weren’t on the same side of said debate, I should point out). But whether one believes in a stricter or looser definition, it’s still the presence or absence of certain tropes on which one is likely basing the bulk of one’s argument.
Writing Fantasy Heroes Page 11