Character Transformations and Vicissitudes

A good story is all about change. Without change, nothing happens, there's no excitement, no tension, no action. The whole structure of storytelling is to open with tension inherent in the situation--a combination of factors that means change is inevitable, and what we watch over the course of the story is how those factors and tensions resolve themselves into change.

What is not interesting is just jumping to the conclusion, and showing the results of the change without showing the process of the change.

This comes up a lot in discussions around portrayal of characters. I've been criticised at times, and had the criticism of other authors, that occasionally characters seem unbelievable because they do something, "out of character." The author's comeback is inevitably, "well, they changed! Isn't that the whole point of character growth?"

Yes and no... character growth does involve changes, but you need to bring the reader along on the ride. The reader doesn't just want to see the results of a change, they want to be there, pace by pace with the character as that character transforms.

Mark Kennedy, an artist and animator whose work I admire, wrote that the essence of humor is watching a character think. He cites the moment in classic cartoons when an animated character runs off a cliff, keeps running, slowly looks down, sees nothing underneath him, starts to look back up (legs still pumping) and then suddenly does a double take, eyes bugging out as he finally realizes he's about to fall. Only then does the character plummet downward. That moment of watching the character realize the predicament they're in, is the essence of the humor.

I would take this a step further, and say that watching a character think is the essence of drama as well.

Here's an example: imagine a supporting character shows up in one scene trying to help the hero, and shows up in the next scene trying to kill the hero, then (without any explanation), shows up in a still later scene trying to help again. Pretty wierd, right?

Now recall the moment from Buffy: The Musical Episode, when Spike, sitting alone, smoking and brooding, sings, "I hope she dies, I'm free if that bitch dies," then, tossing his cigarette away and standing up, immediately follows this with, "I better help her out."

Not only is that moment hilarious (called it, Kennedy) but it takes you into Spike's mind. You see the conflicting desires that rage in his heart, but what tells is the one that comes out on top in the end. It's a great moment of internal conflict. However, if he had acted on those words and *actually* tried to kill her, then turned around and tried to help her, that would have been wierd and deeply off-putting.

Another example is described by Kennedy in a recent post (go about halfway down to the part about the Detectorists) where he describes a quick series of shots that takes only seconds, but show the process of a character thinking and changing. A guy starts lonely because his girlfriend has moved out. While taking out the trash, he finds a positive pregnancy kit. There's a shot of his face, showing how much this rocks him. Then it cuts to a shot of a half-empty bottle. Then it cuts to him leaving a voicemail for her saying how much he loves her and wants her back.

If we hadn't been there along the way, seen the pregnancy kit, the shock, the alcohol, the implication of time passing due to how much of the bottle he's drunk, then the transformation in him would be strange to the point of being nonsensical. But we do have those things, and so you're there with the character as he transforms, you see the time it takes for him to come to this decision (the bottle's half-empty; he must have spent time thinking about it) without having to take all that time yourself (we don't have two hours of him drinking on screen, just cut to a half-empty bottle.)

All too often I see moments in movies or books where suddenly a character is behaving in a way that is very different from what I would expect, knowing them as I do. Once in a long while this can be used to great effect, to build tension (why is she doing this all of a sudden?), but that has to be used a special way: rarely and with a huge and unmistakeable change. Much more commonly it's a slight dissonance which leaves you feeling like maybe you just didn't know the character as well as you thought, and that detaches you from the character, and by extension, from the story.

The point is, when you're writing a character's transformations, don't show the change in action until you show the change in thought. Give the reader insight into the character's heart and mind as it changes. Only then will the change in action make sense.

As Kennedy says, cut to the face, and show the audience how the character is reacting.

Hate and Fear in Fiction - What makes a compelling villain?

I've been bouncing some crazy ideas around about fiction and how we use it to process our darker emotions. First, a question for you...

What is the nature of evil?

I feel like most people would probably answer "hatred," right? (If you disagree, or have something else to offer, please let me know in the comments!)

The question of how to create a really good villain is something of an enigma. There's no one right way to create a compelling villain, but there are a few commonalities...

1) They should be someone you love to hate. Perhaps most important, they need to offend, insult, piss off, and/or enrage the reader sufficiently that you want to destroy them by the end, you yearn with a visceral hatred to just rip them to pieces, see them and everything they love destroyed. The best villains evoke this kind of reaction--but you can't try too hard for it or the villain just ends up seeming silly and melodramatic. Game of Thrones is full of these characters: Joffrey and Cersei, for my money.

2) You should be able to empathize with the villain. Right or wrong, even as they hurt you and anger you enough to make you hate them, at the same time you should /understand/ them at least a little bit. It may make you sad, but you should be able to see how they came to be where they are and--chillingly--recognize that it could have been you in the right (wrong?) circumstances. The villain of Watchman, Adrian Veidt/Ozymandius, is an excellent example of this kind of character. Even as you loathe him in the end... you can't help but wonder if you agree...

3) They should be fascinating in some sense. The Magnificent Bastard, for example, makes an excellent villain: bold, charismatic, independent, audacious and genius. Something mysterious and exciting about them. They should be as evil as they are charismatic. They make you want to follow them, even as you know you shouldn't. And when you eventually come to hate them, the feeling is all the stronger because of how much you could have loved them. The Phantom of the Opera is a good example of this kind of character.

But here's the magnificent irony of it all. While hatred is at the heart of true evil, the most successful villain is the one who elicits hatred in the audience.

By exploring evil, we tap into the evil parts of ourselves. By observing what we hate on-screen, we ourselves become creatures possessed by hate, by the desire to rend and destroy.

But it's okay, right? Because we hate something evil? But is hate still evil even if it points at something evil? Many of the most heinous crimes in the history of the world have been committed with hatred--genocide, murder, torture. But it's always a reaction to the villainy we see in the other; we are okay with hating and hurting because what we hate and hurt is evil... but in so doing, we ourselves become filled with hate and the desire to hurt.

It's a lot to wrap your head around... I'm just glad to get this stuff out in fiction rather than in real life. I'd much rather cathartically destroy a villain on-screen, rather than actually destroy another human being in real life under the hate-filled guise of some noble cause.

If you define evil as 'driven by hatred,' then it's beautifully ironic that the best villain is the one who turns the audience themselves into villains...

(If you like this, back the Kickstarter for my book: "The Good, the Bad, and the Undead" today, and see some of my explorations of the nature of good and evil in practice--with zombies!)

Snarkiness or Fear? How to Write a Compelling Main Character

Hello hello, long time no see. I've been doing a lot of writing lately, and I keep having these observations I'd like to share, so might as well dust off the old blog.

Today's observation has to do with the snarky hero. How much snarkiness do you want? How much real terror? How do you find the right balance?

I see this as a spectrum ranging from characters like Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden on one end, spit-talking and cracking jokes not only in the face of death, but in the face of utter world annihilation, over to on the other end, characters like the hapless protagonists of bad horror movies, capable of little but screaming in terror.

Should your character be awed and disgusted and terrified by the dangers and horrors she sees? Or should she face it with a brave smile, cracking jokes to keep her spirits up (and to keep the reader amused)?

As in many cases, I think the correct path is the middle one. Characters without spine and spirit are no fun, either to write or to watch. And persistent action scenes can get boring if there aren't some jokes to spice them up. Yet at the same time, you don't want your character to be so insenitive to the violence and danger that the reader doesn't care either.

I think probably the ideal--at least for me at this time--is to strive for landing closer on the snarky end of the spectrum, maybe about 80% snarky, 20% real. This way, the 80% snarky keeps it fun and makes the character strong-willed enough to be interesting. Furthermore, saving the real reactions for the most crucial times will help bring power to those moments.

It's all about contrasts, right? If the character screams at every spook, then there's no difference between the zombie that lurches around a corner or the Cthulhic Old One that rises from the deeps. But if the character faces horror after horror without blinking, then that one time she does drop her jaw and run really tells you something!

What do you think? Post in the comments below!

Writing Advice: R.A. Salvatore on Fight Scenes

I think I need to revisit what the purpose of this blog is. So far, I've been focusing on gamebooks, but there's only so much gamebook theory one can write. Besides which, as my own career branches into areas other than pure gamebooks, I'm finding that my areas of interest are broader than just that.

More on this later. I think I've got some ideas for where I can go with this blog. But in the meantime, I'd like to share something absolutely fascinating.

This post by Susan Morris of Shelfari is an interview with R.A. Salvatore on writing fight scenes. There's a lot of advice, theory, speculation and opinion floating around the internet on how to write a great fight scene, but this article takes it right out of the mouth of a master.

And what he says isn't always what you would expect.

I highly recommend this read, for anyone interested in writing great fight scenes in their own stories: http://blog.shelfari.com/my_weblog/2011/08/ra-salvatore-on-how-to-write-a-damn-good-fight-scene.html


Here's a couple of choice quotes...

"Fighting is more about your feet than anything. Balance, balance, balance. Now, after so many battle scenes, I find myself spending my preparation thinking about the battlefield itself. If these guys were fighting in a ring, I'd be writing pretty much the same movements every time. Put them on a rocky hillside, or in a tight cave, or against a monster that is decidedly not humanoid, and I've got the variety that keeps it interesting for me."

"I wish I had a better answer about which point of view to choose, but honestly, I just go with my gut. I'm a product of growing up with television; I love point of view shifts as long as they're clearly done. If I have six people fighting, you might get six different viewpoints. It's controlled chaos, you bet."

"Few actual fighters would ever do a spin in a fight, of course, fearing that they'd catch a sword between the shoulder blades. Drizzt does that spin move all the time. He's just that fast, and it is, after all, fantasy."

"Believe it or not, despite scores of fight scenes in dozens of books, the top ones are easy for me to rate. In third place..." (read the article to see his full list!)

"My best writing days are battle scene days, because when I get into it, I can't stop. Then again, my worst writing days are battle scene days, because if I don't have the energy, I simply cannot do it."


As I said, I found it a great read. Both more simple, and more intuitive than a lot of the advice on the internet would have you believe. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did :)

Gender and Feminism (or the lack thereof) in Legacy of the Zendari

Thank you to everyone for all the comments on all of the reviews, and especially on my own post-mortem for Legacy of the Zendari. Much appreciated! (I can't believe I've finished all the reviews!)

Anyway, while it's still fresh in my readers' minds, I'd like to bring up one response I got to Legacy of the Zendari which I did not include in my previous post about it: an accusation of sexism.

I was a bit taken aback by this. I consider myself a feminist, to the extent that I firmly believe all people are fundamentally equal. Do I think anybody should get special rights? No, on either side of that equation. That said, if there is an imbalance, effort must be exerted to correct that imbalance. It won't happen on it's own.

While this principle of equality is one that I firmly believe, and want to layer into all of my writing, my goal is not to hit the reader over the head with it every time. Nor do I even think that would be effective.

So I wrote Legacy of the Zendari like I write any piece, by coming up with some characters that seemed both natural and to fit the story and throwing them in.

It never even occurred to me that these characters might add together to create a world view that seemed sexist. Maybe that's my bad for not looking out for it?

I mean, ignorance is not an excuse, but at the same time... you take a character like the Geo-Cure girl (who I believe I named Jenny...). She's not a strong woman--but she's not a strong character. She's existed as a conscious being for like, two and a half hours, tops, by the end of the story. She was born (effectively) fully fledged, a brand new consciousness in the body of a young adult, with all the experiences and feelings that come with that body. Totally unprepared to be rescued by a dashing, heroic RADF agent of the gender she is sexually attracted to.

Is this an adolescent fantasy? Sure, to some extent. You open the case to find a beautiful, naked girl, who immediately latches on to you. But part of my message there was not just to say, "hey dude, hot times on the horizon!" It's to, hopefully, if I did my job right, raise some very valid moral questions about whether doing anything with her would be morally acceptable. Though she has the body of an adult, she's in spirit more like a child. And you're her only guardian.

Though in the story, one route is to embrace your relationship with her, and there's definitely an implication of where that relationship is going, that's not the only route, nor (do I think), there's any moral implication that that's the correct route.

From my perspective, I certainly wasn't intending that to be "degrading to women." The premise is, well, science fiction, and maybe a little bit of wish-fulfillment, but everything after that, though perhaps a bit cliche, is both realistic within the terms of the world, and consistent to the characters themselves. It seems natural to me that someone who just woke up would latch on to the nearest strong personality.

The other complaint this reader lodged was that every woman in the show was "there to be a romantic interest for a male."

Well, every character is there for a reason. For the Rick and Lisa romance, for example, it's true that Lisa is there "just" to be a romantic interest for Rick--but it's equally true that Rick is there "just" to be a romantic interest for Lisa. I don't see either statement as being relevant. (In fact, neither is there "just" for their relationship with the other, they also flesh out the roles of some of the minor characters in the base, serving functions on the base and presenting minor interactions with the main character.)

The main characters has two potential love interests, but love triangles and the difficult choices those create are a common literary theme, both in high literature and pulp fiction. Any dating game takes this to extremes--are those sexist?

There are only a couple of characters that *aren't* involved in any romance. None of them happen to be women, but that's just because I happened to choose male for the gender of those characters. There was no social statement intended by that decision. It's a military setting, and most military settings today are dominated by men. If anything, I personally am impressed by Minna for being intelligent, successful, and unintimidated by her gruff coworkers and commanding officer.

So, those are my thoughts, but maybe I missed something.

Here's the question I put to you, is this work degrading to women? Does it represent women in a degrading or insensitive light, or relegate them to an inferior position with relation to men, in any way? 

Though a feminist, it is not my goal to wave the feminist flag high and proud with every single piece I write--any more than it's my goal to wave the atheist or gay rights flag high and proud with every single piece I write, even though those are also beliefs I happen to hold. I don't think shoving your morals down the reader's throat does anybody any good. If you want to share your opinions, do it subtly; just raise the question and let the reader decide for him- or herself.

That said, I also don't want to accidentally wave a sexist flag! 

When I tried to express these thoughts to this reader (someone I do know in person), I was advised to seek a "more enlightened male" who could explain it to me. So, here I am, asking for help. What do you all think?

(Though responses from male readers are highly valued, given the subject matter, I would be especially interested to hear responses from any female readers out there!)

O: On Writing a Novel

Writing a novel is hard.


I set a goal for myself, in April, to take a stab at writing a novel in a month. (Yeah, like that was going to happen.) But while I haven't been able to complete it, the important thing for my purposes was using that as incentive to start it. I designed the challenge so that even if I didn't meet the goal, I would still be in a good position. And I am.

Here are some of the lessons I've learned from my first attempt to write a novel.

1) Plan, plan, plan: One of the problems I ran into in this case was not enough planning. Don't get me wrong, I spent a month planning and wrote a detailed initial outline. But after that, because of the time constraints, I never set aside more time for brainstorming. I felt like any time I sat down to write, I had to produce word count, or I would fall behind.

That is ultimately a failing strategy. The important thing isn't the word count, it's the thought that goes into the word count. In my experience here, what I found was not that I produced something awful, but that as the underlying thought behind the story dried up, eventually I just couldn't write at all.

At the end of the day, your story has two values, Thought, and Word Count. The higher you can get the ratio of Thought/Word Count the better. I don't know if, for my purposes, I'll use word count as a benchmark again. It directs my attention and energy to the wrong place.

2) Character Growth: One of the things I found missing was character growth for my protagonist. The outline I drew up looks very good on paper, but as you go through, exploring the reality of the story, you find things out that you didn't realize before. What I need to do, at this point, is take a step back and think about her story, where she came from, and where she's going. That's going to require some re-writing; and that's not compatible with pounding out the most rapid word count I can.

3) Villain Depth: Another thing I discovered as I went along is that my villain has all the depth of a lily pad on dry ground. This is another opportunity for re-thinking and re-writing. It *can* work to have a villain with "evil" drives, such as wanting to dominate and control other people, but I had nothing to him except that. As a friend pointed out, nobody thinks of themselves as evil. In order to make a villain more than a 2D caricature, you need to get inside their head and understand how they see themselves. If I want my villain to be "evil," by any sane standard, that begs the question... how does he justify it in his own mind? A good answer to that could turn a comic villain into a deeply interesting human being.

4) Time to Germinate: Another thing I realized is that sometimes, you can't just sit down and make this stuff up. I knew when I ran into points where something was missing. But it wasn't coming to me, and I couldn't force it to. I tried going on anyway, and felt very dissatisfied with the result. The only thing I can assume at this point is that my inner creative cauldron just needs more time to simmer.

So, these are the obstacles I ran into. I don't know if they'll be relevant in all situations, but if you find yourself in a similar situation, blocked in a novel, maybe this could be a helpful checklist, to see if any of these are the roadblocks you're facing.

Looking back on this challenge to myself, I think it was a ringing success. Though I didn't meet my stated goal (100,000 words in one month,) I knew at the start that I might not, and that would be okay, because I would probably learn valuable lessons along the way. And that's exactly what's happened. I'm one step closer to writing my first novel, and that first novel will probably be a little better for having done this exercise.

B: Basics of Writing

Hundreds of thousands of people write novels every year. It's not a unique or terribly important experience, in the grand scheme of things. But having sex isn't a unique experience either, and it's still pretty damn important the first time you do it. (And hopefully a few times after that, too.)

I am now writing my first novel. It's a big step for me. I'm trying to pretend it's not a big deal by describing it, in my own mind, as "a practice novel." Also by rushing through it as quickly as possible so as not to give myself a chance to panic

In order to reach this point, I had to arrive at a few basic principles, enough to make me feel like I know how to write a novel. I would like to share those with you now.

Without further ado, the basics of writing:

1) Have a Story: I know, it seems obvious, but we're talking basics here. Writing is communication. Don't write for the sake of putting words on paper. Write for the sake of communicating something. If you're writing a novel, that 'something' should be a story. Ideally, there will be morals and messages and lessons about life nestled in there as well, but "nestled" is the key word. It should essentially be a story.

In my recent experience, I knew that I had a novel when the climactic moment of the story came to me. It's a powerful moment, when someone defies odds, defies pain and terror and bad habits to strike out against the darkness, even when it seems overwhelming. It's a symbolic moment. It's a story.

Basically, before you try to tell a story, make sure you have a story.

2) Be Clear: Advice to authors really likes to urge, "be concise." It's not bad advice, but on looking back at some great novels, honestly, they aren't always concise. Hemingway? Yes. Tolstoy? Not so much. I think what is really meant by "be concise" might actually be, "be clear."

As we established above, writing is communication. Don't write unless you have something to say. As a second tenet to that first one: make what you're saying really, really clear. In any given scene, the reader should know what's at stake. Tell them, in a hundred little ways. Then tell them directly, out loud. Don't bore them with repetition, but reinforce it, again and again, showing new perspectives on why it's a big deal. If the villain is going to fall into a death-dispensing gravity engine, make sure the reader knows it's there beforehand. If the hero is going to make a terrible decision to use a gun, with disastrous consequences, make sure the reader sees the gun in advance, and has a chance to think about what bad things might happen because it's there. And don't fill in the space with clutter. Take your time to work your craft and make the piece beautiful, but unless the price of grain is deeply relevant to your story, there's really no reason to bring it up.

3) Care about your characters: At the end of the day, I think this is the most important. If you care about your characters, they must be more than 2D caricatures. Maybe you can throw a flat puppet into a morality play to make a point, but if you really love that character, if you name them, if you laugh with them at their mistakes, cheer with them for their victories, and cry with them in their time of darkness, then you can't abuse them by putting them in a bad story. Your heart will rebel.

There is no story without people at the heart of it. If you make a story out of planets or tetrapods, it's because you've made them into people. I don't care how brilliant your logic, philosophy and literary allusions are; if there aren't real people, people who make me love them or hate them, at the heart of your story, it's going to be a yawner.

Love your characters, and they will love you. And if your characters love you, then they will tell you when you're doing it wrong. They'll leap right out of the narrow plot you had written for them and tell you things you never knew about your story.

Either that, or I've got it all wrong. You decide :)

Challenges in Writing, and Keeping Score

Hello, everyone. It's been a long couple of weeks, and I apologize for my absence. My life took an upset (which in this case, is a good thing) but it disrupted my rhythm.

There are several common challenges which face writers, some of which I struggle with, and of those, two of them have hit me pretty hard over the last couple weeks. 1) Morale. 2) Time Management. Morale, to be perfectly honest, is something I'm usually pretty good at. Time management, to be perfectly honest, is not.

I'm not sure what happened morale-wise. I was going along fine and then--bam: I'm not good enough! To be fair, I don't exactly have a lot of accomplishments under my belt to be proud of--yet. But I have more conviction, motivation and momentum toward accomplishing my goals than I ever have before, and I'm looking forward to seeing where this train takes me. I think this was just a hiccup of old self-doubts. It happens. Don't worry about it, and it will pass.

More complicated is time management. This is like that clown that you punch and punch and he just keeps rolling back up. You can try and try and try, but old habits have a way of re-asserting themselves. You keep fucking up and being late, or slacking off, or whatever, no matter how many times you insist to yourself that next time, it really will be different.

Quite frustrating really. I don't have a solution, except that sometimes, if you try hard enough for long enough, it just seems to stop.

I won't say I've solved this problem. But I've gotten a hell of a lot better than I used to be. For example, I can actually write stuff now! Like, complete stories! Yay, me! That used to be just outside the scope of my attention span. Not sure what happened, but it seems to have changed, and I'm grateful for it. (This may be tied to morale... maybe more self-confidence helped? Not sure.)

Anyway, because time management is still something I struggle with, I've come to the following program to help me stay on track with my novel.

Oh yeah, I'm writing a novel. Angry Robot Open Door Submissions, Apr 16-Apr30. I found out about it at the end of February, decided I would go for it. Had a goal of an outline by March 16, got that. Now I have a new goal: 5000 words per day. At that rate, I should be able to write a 100,000 word novel in 20 days. That allows me up to 10 days for bad days, traveling days, gaming days, etc.

So, next question: how am I going to keep score? Well, I'm a game designer by hobby (of not by profession--yet) so I built a little game for myself.

Here it is:

each 1000 words = 1 point
each 1000 words written before 2:00 pm = 2 points, instead (Habit building, trying to write in the mornings.)
meeting my 5000 word goal in a day = 3 points

People tend to ask things like, "what are the point for?" They're for keeping score :) Beyond that, nothing really. If I come up with something more interesting later, I'll let you know.

So, if you see me posting on twitter, "13 points today!" that means it was a good day!

Okay, hell, for the sake of not ignoring the blog, I'll put in another measurement: 1 bonus point if I do a blog post :)

Last, but not least, for the sake of not ignoring the rest of my life, one last measurement: a gold star if I also take care of real-life shit that day.

So, the final score-keeping rules:


1000 words written after 2:00 pm = 1 point
1000 words written before 2:00 pm = 2 points
Meeting my 5000 word goal in a day = 3 points
If I happen to make it to 10,000 words = 5 points (instead of 3, so, another 2 points.)
If I also write a blog post = 1 point
And if I also take care of real life shit = Gold Star

Credit is only given for full thousand-word chunks. 999 words is worth 0 points. 1000 is worth 1 (or 2, if I finish it before 2:00 pm.) However, an exception for up to 300 words can be given, if I stopped at a natural stopping point, such as the end of a chapter. So 4,720 words could count for 5000 if I stopped at a natural break point.

Points are not given for text which I discard. If I write three drafts of a passage, only the final draft counts for  points.

I acknowledge mixed feelings about how to handle this. Writing and re-writing is an important part of the creative proces. The only reason I want to do it this way for now is because I want to encourage, at this stage, doing a brain-dump kind of writing. It's a hell of a lot easier to edit than it is to get that first draft down on paper (metaphorical paper--where are we, the dark ages?) so it's important to me to rush through my first draft as quickly as possible.

At that point, I'm sure, I will see many glaring errors and go back and re-write 99% of it. But that first draft, I just want to pump out as quickly as possible.


The goal, of course, being to have a draft between 95,000 and 140,000 words prepared by April 16. Then I can take one or two weeks for revisions and submit!

Wish me luck :)

P.S. My new Kinesis Contoured Ergonomic Keyboard came today. Awesome! Now I can (hopefully) manage keeping up this word count with less exhaustion of the hands and fingers!

Style and Tone in a Blog

Getting started with my blog, I feel a little like I'm wandering into a deep dark cave. I know there are thousands, millions of other people out there in this cave with me, but I can't see them, and I don't know if they can see me. But once in a while, we stumble into each other.

As I grope my way around in the dark, I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing. How should I write? What kind of style and tone is appropriate? Will people be reading this, or is it little more than a glorified journal?

Here are a few answers I've tripped across so far:

Authority: The internet is made of audacity and hot air. As near as I can figure, presenting yourself as anything less than the absolute authority on a subject is a major faux pas. For example, in this post, I've already made it clear that I have no idea what I'm doing. Yet now I'm about to proceed to give you all my advice. Welcome to the internet. (*sigh* this bullet point is going to take some getting used to for me.)

Topic: It goes without saying that you should write about what you care about. If you are genuinely engaged with your subject matter, you will have far more of substance to say than if you are writing for some other reason (e.g. you think it's what you "should" write, for any misguided reason.) I also speculate that a blog will likely be more successful if focused on a single topic. Readers who know what to expect will be more likely to come back.

That said... I may deviate from that last point in my own blog. I have a core purpose for this blog, but as it is also a "personal" blog, I plan on experimenting with sharing other observations from time to time as well (as I am doing in this very post.) We'll see how that works out.

Style and Tone: This is the question which really got me started along this line of inquiry. After putting some thought into it, I've come to the conclusion that the correct tone for a blog post is light and conversational--but this does not excuse bad writing. "Conversational," is not an excuse for "long and rambling" and "light" does not mean you don't have to put effort in.

So what does it mean? I think "conversational" just means informal. You can throw jokes in.You can address the reader. And you can refer to yourself (which we were all instructed not to do in college). "Light" simply means easy to read. Use simple sentences. Don't weigh down your prose with heavy words. Get the point across, but don't be pretentious about it. (I was a lit major; this is basically anathema to everything I was ever taught.)

For myself, I have a tendency to write in a long and rambling style. Learning to adjust my style to be more punchy and to-the-point is one of my major growth areas as a writer.

Length: On the strong research platform of a 30 second google search and a link provided by Stuart, I have drawn the conclusion that a good guideline is to keep posts over 250 words and under 1000 words. Honestly, the best answer to this is, "as long as you need." The topic should determine the length... but between 250-1000 words does provide a good guideline. Just try to stay (see above) light and to-the-point, and if you have more to say, you may want to split it into a few posts, each comfortably meal-sized.

Presentation: This point cannot be emphasized enough: the title and the first few lines MUST accurately represent what the rest of the post is about. From my own observations (backed up by more popular wisdom) you can only count on a reader to view the title and maybe the first few lines. That's long enough for most of us (me at least) to determine if I want to read the whole thing. There is no point in burying valuable content deep in an the text of an unrelated post.

Last but not least...
Readership: Gosh, when I figure this one out, I'll let you know. I still have only eight followers. On the other hand, I'm up to eight followers, some of whom I don't even know OMG!!!

And that concludes this week's session of Professor Ashton. Hope you enjoyed =)

P.S. 750 words, not too bad! (more or less... after edits)