When Should a Writer Start Over?

Those of you who have attended my workshops and read some of my other articles on the craft of writing already know that I’m a firm believer in pressing forward with a first draft, regardless of how bad it may seem at the time. I think the reason why most books don’t get finished is because the writer keeps trying to edit the manuscript too soon, like a chef constantly opening the oven to check on their soufflé before it’s ready. This kind of premature revision often leads to the writer repeatedly starting over again without ever getting any closer to a finished first draft, let alone a completed novel. However, I think there is definitely a point when the wisest course of action is to quit that failed first draft and try it all over again.

To know whether you've reached this point in your own writing, you’ll need to be able to identify your story’s premise. The premise is simply a short statement that identifies your protagonist and the story’s primary conflict. “A professional assassin decides to protect his latest target from the crime syndicate trying to kill her” would be an example of this. You can also think of your premise as your one-line or elevator pitch to agents and editors, something that sums up the core of what your story is all about. Side characters may come and go, elements of the plot may change, even the story’s genre can evolve during the writing process. Ideally however, the central idea of the story should remain unchanged, serving as a guide for both the writing and editing process.

But what if the premise does need to change? Say you’re writing the story about the professional assassin described earlier, but you've realized that you can’t come up with any ideas of where to take the plot. Perhaps even worse, you find yourself not liking your protagonist, and you start to see this project as a chore, rather than a labor of love. If all of this sounds familiar, then you might want to step back from the project and consider whether the premise needs to change. If it does, then it may be time to declare your manuscript a failed draft and start coming up with something else that you’ll actually enjoy writing.

So, does changing the premise mean that you have to delete everything you've written so far? Of course not! Never delete old drafts! On the other hand, don’t seal them under glass either. Take that failed first draft and start chopping out bits and pieces that would work in your new project. Maybe there was a great argument that you wrote that could be adjusted to fit the new plot. Or maybe you have a couple of strongly developed characters that can survive the transplanting from one premise to another.

Use your failed draft as a place to mine for ideas and you won’t have to start your new project with a blank page. Remember that you've got plenty of good writing in your previous attempt. Use it, and make sure that whatever story you end up writing is the one that you want to write, not the one that you feel like you’re supposed to write.

Top Ten JRPG Playable Character Tropes

Japanese role-playing games have traditionally been associated with complex storylines, linear plots, and a cast of colorful characters. Of course, there’s a limited amount of time for character development in a video game, and developers will often use familiar character types to quickly establish who everybody is and how they will fit into the group dynamic. When I play these types of games, I always try to pick out who is playing which role (no pun intended) and decided to make my own top ten list of the most common tropes that I’ve seen.

Keep in mind that all of my examples come from JRPGs that I’ve played and am already familiar with. Also, these are just my opinions and are not necessarily meant to be criticisms of these games, although some of them definitely do a better job of character development than others.

10. The Tomboy

Examples: Aika – Skies of Arcadia, Penelo – Final Fantasy XII, Lucca – Chrono Trigger

Description: What male hero wouldn’t like to have a beautiful friend since childhood who can be one of the guys and has nursed a secret crush all this time? Pigtails are not required, but they don’t seem to hurt.

9. The Demure Female

Examples: Yuna – Final Fantasy X, Fina – Skies of Arcadia, Sophia – Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Description: With all this killing and looting of monsters, every party of adventurers needs a softer, gentler side. Bonus points if she’s pretty and can cast healing spells.

8. The Perky One

Examples: Oerba Dia Vanille – Final Fantasy XIII, Rikku – Final Fantasy X, Jansen – Lost Odyssey

Description: Lest we forget we’re playing a game, this character will always be around to make jokes and generally try to lighten the mood of any setting, regardless of how serious the situation really is. You do realize nearly everything here is trying to kill us, don’t you?

7. The Overly-Sexed Character

Examples: Queen Ming –Lost Odyssey, Fran – Final Fantasy XII, Vashyron – Resonance of Fate

Description: Is the objectification of women, either through costume or attitude, significant enough to be a major character trait? Maybe. Do we need it to enjoy great gameplay and an engaging storyline? No. No we don’t.

6. The Old Person

Examples: Sazh Katzroy – Final Fantasy XIII, Auron – Final Fantasy X, Eldore – White Knight Chronicles

Description: When nearly every playable character is 17, just being in your early thirties could qualify someone for this trope. Of course, since everyone performs exactly the same, the only way we can tell they are older is if they mention it. Over. And over. And over.

5. The Child

Examples: Peppita Rossetti and Roger S. Huxley – Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Cooke and Mack – The Last Odyssey, Hope Estheim – Final Fantasy XIII

Description: How do you explain an eleven year old who can kill dozens of trained soldiers and/or ferocious monsters? “The needs of the story.” That’s how.

4. The Tourist

Examples: Tidus – Final Fantasy X, Leonard and Yunie – White Knight Chronicles, Fayt Leingod – Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Description: We all know that dialogue is one of the easiest ways to give exposition. Result? We get a character that knows absolutely nothing about the world around them, regardless of whether they’re a native or not.

3. The Tour Guide

Examples: Fran – Final Fantasy XII, Eldore – White Knight Chronicles, Cliff – Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Description: What’s a tourist without a guide? This inevitably helpful character is always ready to give the player a brief description of a location, magic system, or type of monster. Fluency in mystical languages carved into ruins is a plus.

2. The Brooder

Examples: Auron – Final Fantasy X, Basche – Final Fantasy XII, Captain Drachma – Skies of Arcadia, Kaim – Lost Odyssey

Description: Every team needs a man of mystery. Someone with a tragic past, a dark backstory. Someone who will offset the obnoxious jokes of the Perky One.

1. The Bland Protagonist

Examples: Chrono – Chrono Trigger, Fayt – Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Edge Maverick – Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Leonard – White Knight Chronicles, etc. etc. etc.

Description: I get it. It’s hard to make the player feel like they really are the hero in a game where they have no direct control over the protagonist’s personality. Nearly every JRPG I’ve played solves this problem by giving the hero as little personality as possible. While they may have other dialogue, it always seems like most of their vocabulary is based on three themes, “Whoa!” “Huh?” and, of course, “NOOOOOOOOO!” Oh well. At least we have this colorful cast surrounding him…



Did you think of another example of one of the tropes I listed? Are there any other playable character types that I missed? Then leave a comment below and let me know if you’d like to see more top ten lists like this one in the future.

Thanks to Raven Oaks for giving me the idea for this week’s post.

Where Did Lost Under Two Moons Come From?

Recently, I was speaking to a group of teenagers about writing and was asked where I got my ideas for my two published novels. While I've described the initial inspiration for The Beast Hunter in various online interviews before, I realized that I've never told the story of how I got the idea for Lost Under Two Moons.

The first inspiration for what would eventually become my first novel came to me during my freshman year in high school. I remember sitting in a particularly boring study hall and going through my backpack trying to find something to entertain me. In one of the pockets I found an unopened package of notecards, and with nothing else to do, I opened it and began to doodle.

I've never been much of an artist, but it didn't seem to matter on a 3 by 5 card that I could always throw away. I started with a random shape and then began adding little details to it. Soon, I had a strange, round little creature with two legs and a body that was little more than a head with gigantic eyes and a gaping mouth. At the time, I had no idea that this simple little pencil sketch would one day be my first major published antagonist, the bigamouth.

I started doing all kinds of sketches, one for each card in the package. Some were just doodles, but most ended up being weird little creatures. By the time I had twenty or thirty of the drawings, I started to think about some kind of story involving them. I even tried starting a novel about a world-hopping cryptozoologist, but it never got farther than the third page and I soon forgot about it to focus on a play I was working on for an upcoming performance.

It wasn't until I returned home from film school in Canada that I thought about those doodles again. I’d decided to give up trying to get into the film industry, and figured I’d try my hand at novel writing instead. I had a novel I’d been working on for years already, but after ten years of work I still had next to nothing to show for it. Dissatisfied, I tried to think of some other idea I may have had at one time or another that I could work on, and thus began work on what would ultimately become Lost Under Two Moons. It took me more than two years’ work, but eventually I had a finished, published novel that started with a doodle in a particularly boring study hall.



Thanks to Jerry Staton for suggesting this week’s article. Leave a comment below if you enjoyed it or have a suggestion for a future subject.

Chance to Win a Free Book for New Blog Followers

For those of you who aren't familiar with my author blog, I've maintained it for almost a year now with multiple articles each month on subjects including the craft of writing, bonus content for my stories, and even a few game storyline reviews.

If you’re not already following it, now’s the perfect time, as I will be giving a free copy of one of my books to one lucky follower if we manage to reach 50 or more total followers by the 6th of April.

To enter the drawing, click the Follow button in the right-hand column. You will need a Google+ account to follow my blog, but it’s free and easy to set up if you don’t already have one.

Remember that we need at least 50 followers by the 6th of April for the drawing to happen, so be sure to spread the word!

What Makes a Classic Novel Popular?

There are many novels that we would consider classics. Stories that have outlived their creators and found new readers with each passing generation. But not all classics are what we may consider popular in today’s culture. Many classics seem to live on mainly in schools and universities as required reading in a sort of artificial life-support rather than the healthy independence of a novel that people buy and read because they want to.

Of course, I’m not saying that assigning classic literature in schools is a bad thing. In many cases, it’s the first exposure students have to the kind of writing that challenges them to really think and consider what they've read rather than simply seeking to be entertained. But what makes a certain type of classic novel popular? Why are characters like Tarzan, Dracula, and Frodo Baggins still a significant part of our culture decades after they were created?

The simplest answer is that most people have been exposed to these characters outside of their original works. Movies, TV shows, and even video games and graphic novels have turned classic characters into brand names, something familiar that the average consumer feels like he knows and is therefore more willing to spend money on. These days, it’s likely that most consumers are first exposed to classic works of fiction through some medium other than their original work.

However, I believe there’s more to a popular classic’s appeal than its level of exposure. I think it’s safe to say that every classic novel has been adapted to some other medium at one time or another, but that doesn't make them popular, just recognizable. This is why I believe that a classic book needs more than a move tie-in to make it popular today, and I think it has something to do with the quality of the original source material.

Put simply, I think it’s in the characters. A well-written character can withstand both the test of time as well as any number of adaptations, re-imaginings, and reboots as long as they are equally intriguing and empathetic. A popular classic character is both relatable and interesting, with qualities that remind us of ourselves and motivations that we can understand and care about.

Think of how many different Sherlock Holmes’ we have seen over the years. Many actors have left their own marks on the genius from Baker Street. Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Robert Downey Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch… they've all taken the name of Sherlock upon themselves, and yet the

character himself has outlived them all. This is because Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made his detective both nuanced and complex while still leaving enough flexibility within his development for readers to share in the creative process using their own imaginations. As we read a Sherlock Holmes mystery, we create our own version of the detective in our minds, and it’s that level of intimacy that builds a lasting relationship between the reader and the character.

In the end, the popularity of a classic work of fiction is probably a combination of good storytelling, characters that are relatable across different cultures and time periods, and a healthy dose of serendipitous good fortune. My only hope is that we never lose sight of the original works that introduced the world to the stories that we love, and that we continue to go back to these classic books even as we are entertained by the adaptations and reboots that pay homage to the original creator’s genius.


Thanks to Derek Schreiber for suggesting this week’s article. Leave a comment below if you enjoyed it or have a suggestion for a future subject.