writing Archives - Andrew Knighton Writes

When the Antagonist Isn’t the Villain

Moody black and white photograph of a smartly dressed man smoking and holding a gun. — Image by Sam Williams from Pixabay

A lot of the time, when we talk about stories, we use the terms “villain” and “antagonist” interchangeably. But while they’re often embodied in the same character, they’re not the same thing, and lumping them together doesn’t just have an aesthetic impact on the story, it also has an impact on how we view the world.

Antagonist Vs Villain

What is an antagonist and what is a villain?

Simply put, a villain is a morally bad person, while an antagonist is someone who stands in opposition to the protagonist.

The villain’s moral harm doesn’t need to be huge. It could be as small as selfishly trying to trick the romantic lead out of a healthy relationship, or as vast as trying to wipe out half the life in the universe. But by the moral standards of the story, and its implied perspective, that character is in the wrong.

An antagonist doesn’t have to be this. A well-intentioned character can stand in a protagonist’s way because their aims don’t match, they have different information, or someone’s been tricked. People can disagree without one of them being in the wrong.

Or can they?

Before we get into that question, I want to point out one more thing about this distinction. Being an antagonist means fulfilling a specific role within the mechanics of the story, obstructing the protagonist’s desires and creating tension. Being a villain doesn’t necessarily mean that. It’s a feature of the character, probably an important one, but it’s one they can have while filling all kinds of different roles in the story machine, from background colour to ally to, yes, antagonist.

You could think of villainy as an aesthetic, from a storytelling point of view (not a real world one! I’m not that guy), but as mechanically neutral. Antagonism, on the other hand, is aesthetically neutral—any style of character could be an antagonist—but has a mechanic.

Now, back to that question of disagreement…

Why Are Antagonists Often Villains?

Why bundle these concepts together?

Because protagonists are usually in the right, morally, and that works well when their opponents are in the wrong. This makes the protagonist more sympathetic, the conflict more satisfying, and the story’s moral outcome clearer. The good person was opposed by the bad person and the bad person lost. Order is restored. Reader is happy.

This is how things work in every single ghostwritten novel I’ve worked on. Those books aren’t meant to be challenging, so they use a familiar, comfortable dynamic. Readers follow and empathise with the protagonist, so that’s the hero. They want to see the hero focused on their conflict with the villain, so the villain is the antagonist. And of course, they want to see good beat evil, so this all fits nicely together.

It’s satisfying.

Separating Antagonists and Villains

But the two don’t have to line up.

My new novella, Ashes of the Ancestors, features several characters who could be labelled as villains. The warlord Lorkas robs a temple and threatens its innocent priests. The ghost of his former opponent, Eras, prizes old feuds over the good of society. They are both, to borrow a technical term from moral philosophy, murderous arseholes. But while they are the antagonists of certain scenes, neither is the antagonist of the book.

The antagonist of the book is Adrana, a newly arrived priest who wants to smash the Eternal Abbey in order to destroy Eras. That wish puts her in opposition to the protagonist, Magdalisa, who wants to look after her people as best she can—people who rely on the abbey and its ghosts for guidance. Throughout the story, the two are in conflict over this, even as they work together. That conflict creates tension and expresses the central question of the book—how do you relate to tradition and the past?

Adrana isn’t a villain. Her “aesthetic” isn’t one of moral wrong. She and Magdalisa are both sympathetic in their own ways, both right about certain things, and there’s value in what both of them believe. But they’re opposed to each other, and the resolution of the story, the place where the satisfaction kicks in, comes from resolving that tension, not beating the villains.

So far, so good. Villains and antagonists don’t have to be the same thing. But why does that matter?

Accepting Opposition

Stories express and shape how we see the world.

If all of our stories tell us that the people we disagree with—our antagonists—are also morally wrong—villains—then we’ll see the world that way. We’ll find it hard to accept that the person on the other side of a disagreement could be wrong. That’s problematic, to say the least, because none of us are right all the time, and sometimes it’s important to shift with what others say.

Stories where the antagonists are villains teach us the importance of struggling for what’s right, and that’s a good thing to learn.

Stories where the antagonists aren’t villains teach us that not everyone we struggle against is in the wrong, and that’s also a good thing to learn.

Especially right now, when there’s a lot of talk of polarisation within society, it’s important to recognise these two separate lessons, not to run our brains along the same tracks over and over again until we see every person with a different viewpoint as one who is wrong and must be opposed. We need varied stories to help us with that.

Mixing up the relationship between villains and antagonists isn’t just aesthetically satisfying. It’s also morally important.

Trust me, I’m the protagonist here.

If you’ve got thoughts on this, or you’ve got you own experiences of writing villains and antagonists to share, then why not find me on Mastodon or Twitter and tell me about them.

And if what you’ve read above has got you intrigued, or you want to help a poor struggling author so he can break out of ghostwriting and focus on more nuanced books, then you can buy Ashes of the Ancestors here:

Luna Press for physical books

Kobo ebook

Amazon ebook

Starting a Story Wrong: The Abandoned Start of Ashes of the Ancestors

The cover of the book Ashes of the Ancestors

As I mentioned in a blog post earlier in the week, I had several false starts in writing the opening to my novella Ashes of the Ancestors. In fact, one of them got all the way to 1600 words before I realised that it didn’t work. So, for anyone who’s interested, here are those 1600 words – half a chapter that I completely abandoned, and two whole characters who got lost along the way…

“What’s taking you so long, girl? If I had a body, I could have had both those vents cleared an hour ago.”

“I’m sorry, Holy Father.”

My words came out louder than was needed. The spirits could reach me anywhere in the Eternal Abbey, all I needed to offer was a whisper, but I couldn’t help myself, I needed to make sure that I was heard. “The draft plate mechanism is caked with ash. I’m almost done cleaning, but it’s hard to get it all out from between the gear teeth, and that’s what really matters because when it gets compressed—”

“Do you think that your predecessors took this long about their tasks?”

I took a deep breath, forgetting that I had lowered my mask so that I could blow dust from the gears. Floating ash caught in my throat. I gasped, wheezed, rocked back against the wall of the chimney as I fought for breath. One foot slipped down the brickwork and I flung my hands against the walls, knocking ash into a billowing cloud, which made the rasping in my throat even worse. At least I had my goggles on, so could keep my eyes open while I found my footing again. By the time I steadied myself and pulled my mask up, I was coated in grey dust form the top of my headscarf down to the tips of my sandals, and it formed a grey slick of mud in the sweat running down my face.

Vetreas sighed, and the ash swirled.

“We will have to find someone more experienced, to teach you proper care of this place.”

“Yes please, Holy Father.”

I wished that he would, but it seemed unlikely. Even when I had first been led up to the Abbey, neither of the remaining attendants had understood its ancient mechanisms. Fifteen years later, what were the chances that anyone was left in the whole Empire who understood these machines?

“Visitors are coming, they need to be able to see me,” Vetreas said.

“Yes, Holy Father.” I returned to cleaning the mechanism.

“It is particularly important that they can see me in my own chambers, so that we can consult alone.”

“Surely visitors want an audience with all of the Holies?”

“There are many ignorant people in this fallen age, weak and frightened. They find it less intimidating to see the greatest of the Holies alone.”

I focused on brushing the last dust free, making my every movement busy, but Vetreas was the sort of man who could hear hesitation.

“Out with it, girl.”

I knew better than to hold back my answer, even though I wasn’t sure he would like it.

“Surely pilgrims seeking wisdom would want to see the Empress Chryssania.”

Now it was Vetreas who hesitated, while I untied the tools fastened by strings to my wrists, tied them back around my belt, and started climbing down the chimney.

“The Empress is the most venerable of us, but hers is a more worldly insight. Those coming to the Abbey for spiritual guidance will find more comfort in a priest.”

“Of course, Holy Father.”

I emerged from the vent in the ceiling of Vetreas’s chamber and scrambled down the knotted rope hanging there. The ladder from his chimney had broken decades ago, but one of my predecessors had bent its stub into a hook, allowing for the rope. I reached the floor, my sandals slapping against the wide grille, shook the rope loose, and caught it as it fell. Then I pulled a worn iron lever protruding from the wall, and gears rattled somewhere behind the ancient stones. A breeze blew from tubes into the fire pit beneath the grille, then up the chimney.

I tugged the goggles and mask from my face, concealing them in the folds of my headscarf, then bowed to the sandstone throne that sat against the back wall. Vetreas’s outline was just visible there, sketched in the light drift of ash the breeze had shaken loose.

“Might I put these away first, then return to light your fire?” I asked, gesturing to my tools. “I don’t want to risk misplacing any of them.”

“Very well, but be quick.” A movement in the dust showed that Vetreas was waving his hand. “And send Ilippa to me. I need her to take messages to the others.”

“Of course, Holy Father.” It wasn’t my place to send one of the Holies anywhere, but Ilippa was often in the servants’ halls, and if I told her that Archbishop Vetreas wanted to see her, she would surely come. I hoped that when I died I would continue in service as diligently as she did, though I doubted that I would be worthy of a place amid the Holies. Like most spirits, I would probably fade into forgetfulness.

I bowed once more, then hurried out of the room. My footsteps echoed ahead of me down corridors and stairwells, past windows that revealed a dizzying view of the plains hundreds of feet below. Sometimes, my footsteps would bounce back unexpectedly around twists of the corridor or turns of the ash vents, and for a moment I would think that I heard someone else. I would smile, even as the knot in my chest tightened, but then I would remember that it was an illusion. There were many other people in the Abbey, but none whose footsteps made a sound.

Sure enough, Ilippa was in the kitchen, standing in the chimney breast by the small corner of the room that I lived in. The previous night had been a cold one, and I’d stoked the fire high, leaving enough ash for her to make herself almost solid. I could make out the folds of simple robes just like mine, and the kindly smile on her wrinkled face.

“You’ve done a good job sharpening the knives,” she said, leaving a trail of ash across the blades as she ran her fingers over them.

“Thank you,” I said, bowing to her. “Your advice was helpful.”

“You pick up a few tricks, my dear, in seventy years of service and six centuries of watching.” She patted my arm, and I could almost feel her touch. “Now, the Empress sent me to tell you to prepare the grand hall. Our new companion is on her way.”

It was a thousand years since the first empress had sat on the Talaian throne, dozens of monarchs had followed in her wake, and now three candidates all laid claim to her fractured empire, yet we both still knew who Ilippa was talking about. Within the walls of the Eternal Abbey, Chrysannia was the only Empress.

“Vetreas is expecting me to light his fire.”

I wouldn’t have spoken so bluntly to any of the other Holies, but it was hard to maintain a tone of veneration around Ilippa. In my heart, I knew that she was as sacred as any of them, the monastic servant who had worked herself to death so that holy women and men could dedicate themselves to their faith, but her appearance was so like my grandmother and her demeanour so like my mother that it was hard to treat her like I did the rest. She didn’t seem to mind, but I cursed myself every time I forgot to bow in her presence or spoke to her as if she really was the other servant in this place.

“I can explain to Vetreas,” she said. “You go preparing the hall.”

“Are they really here so soon?” I took a handcart from an alcove, hurriedly loaded it with firewood, kindling, lamp oil, and incense. A smell of blood and perfume in that corner of the room made me realise that we weren’t alone, but I kept on as if I hadn’t noticed. I didn’t have time for distractions. “I thought the procession wasn’t due for three more days. I haven’t revised the rites of welcoming or prepared the funeral feast. I don’t know if we even have hangings that haven’t been eaten by moths.”

“Don’t worry, dear, we have everything we need.”

“But the funeral shroud…”

“She’s a powerful woman, she’ll come in one of her own.”

“And the ceremonies…”

“Zenovini can help with those.”

“I haven’t swept the corridors or checked the ropes on the cage or told the townspeople or anything. Oh gods, the townspeople, they’ll be expected to put on a parade, and Yiorgi doesn’t even know about it!”

My voice rose and my cheeks flushed with heat. I grabbed a cloth to wipe the ash and sweat from my face, then froze with it halfway to my forehead. What if I needed this cloth for the ceremonies?

“Zenovini will enjoy explaining the rituals, and I can talk you through the rest. As for a parade from the townspeople, expectations are lower than they used to be. No one will notice if they don’t do the full traditional welcome. This is a warlord, not an archbishop or an empress.”

Her tone seemed as even as ever, but her words hooked at my mind like a briar on a goat’s fleece.

“Do you not approve?” I asked.

“It’s not my place to approve or disapprove, my dear. General Eras is revered by her people. She has brought peace to her provinces, or parts of them at least, and her people revere her name. If she doesn’t deserve a place in the Eternal Abbey, then the flames won’t welcome her.”

“Has that happened before?” The thought that anyone unworthy might be brought for burial was so shocking that I’d never considered it, but now I couldn’t stop myself imagining what might happen. “Did they not burn, or did the spirit simply vanish?”

“Now, dear, you should focus on what’s in front of you. We have guests coming, remember.”

“Of course.” I added a flint and steel to my heaped handcart, then hurried for the door. “Thank you, Holy Ilippa.”

“Happy to help, my dear.” The ashes scattered as she released them and left the room.

###

There we go, the beginning that could have been. It’s far more blunt in its world building than the one I used in the end, and not as good at showing Magdalisa as a character. Even if I’d had space for Ilippa and Vetreas in the book, this would have needed some serious reworking.

Bu if you’d like to see how the story eventually started, and where all this talk of ashes and funerals is heading, you can buy my novella Ashes of the Ancestors here:

Luna Press for physical books

Kobo ebook

Amazon ebook

Starting a Story Right

A fragment of soap slipped between my fingers as I whispered the words of the dawn prayer. Flecks of ash broke away into the water, not the ashes of a funeral pyre, or the fine ash that drifted through the monastery’s air, but ash from a wood fire, which I had not ground finely enough when making the soap. At least none of the monastery’s other inhabitants had to suffer from my inadequate work. The Holies were already pure in spirit, and they had long ago passed the need to make their bodies clean.

That’s how my novella Ashes of the Ancestors starts. But getting a good start is difficult, and this novel went through several. So in case it’s interesting or helpful to anyone, here’s how I considered beginning the book, and why each one didn’t happen.

Version 1

In a sense, I never entered the monastery, though I went into it every day. Forgive me if that sounds obtuse or needlessly cryptic, but I was alive, and only the dead “entered” that divine institution, in a formal sense.

This one was designed to directly and immediately set up the scenario with the ghosts and Magdalisa’s presence among them, to create some tension and intrigue about what’s happening. But the voice wasn’t at all right for Magdalisa, or for the book.

Version 2

My story doesn’t start with Adrana, but it pivots around her.

I still hadn’t worked out that this direct, talking to the audience voice was the wrong tone. I was also trying to set up the key antagonist from the start. (Adrana might not be the villain, but she’s definitely the antagonist of Magdalisa’s story.) The problem is, this actually puts too much emphasis on Adrana, while failing to set up the really important thing, a monastery full of ghosts. I instinctively gave up after one line.

Version 3

The bracelet of my brother’s bones rattled against my wrist, shaking with the voice of the Empress Chryssania.

“Is all well in there, Magdalisa?”

This one’s closer to where we need to be. It’s about Magdalisa and the ghosts. Characters and their names are being established, as well as the first hint of the power dynamics that create the plot’s tensions. And some of the novelty is there, with the bones and the empress. I can’t remember why I abandoned that one, but it feels like it’s rushing to its goal, not taking the time to set stuff up.

Version 4

“What’s taking you so long, girl? If I had a body, I could have had both those vents cleared an hour ago.”

“I’m sorry, Holy Father.”

This starts with characters, and a little conflict for tension. The character without a body will grab attention, and then we start setting up things about the abbey and how it works. From this start, I reached 1600 words, things were flowing.

But if you’ve read the book, you’ll have noticed something – the phrase Holy Father. There is no ghost priest in the story, and this scene is why.

My original outline had significantly more characters than the story I eventually wrote, a lot of ghosts and others representing different relationships with history, including an antagonist bishop ghost named Vetreas. Just writing those 1600 words showed me that I was trying to cram too much in. I went back, rewrote the whole outline, and started again. Which got me to where we started this blog post and the book…

Version 5

This is the polished version after various edits – sadly, I haven’t kept the rougher version. It introduces Magdalisa as a character, a dedicated servant who lacks confidence in herself. It introduces the Holies, these dead characters still with us. It introduces the abbey with all its smoke and hints at the funeral pyres to come. Even the soap will come up again later. The conflicts aren’t quite there yet, but there’s time for that.

I’m pleased with it. I think there’s enough here to intrigue a reader. I’d grown confident enough in the story to take my time and let things build. I think it’s the sort of story that needs that, and I think it pays off well.

Even if you think of a really arresting start to a book, the one you first write will seldom be the best option. That’s just how writing goes. Thinking it through, trying out different options, is part of how you write a story that works.

If you’ve gotten something from this, or you’ve got you own experiences with different starts to share, then why not find me on Mastodon or Twitter and tell me about them.

And if these openings have got you intrigued, you can buy Ashes of the Ancestors here:

Luna Press for physical books

Kobo ebook

Amazon ebook

Some Unsubtle Symbolism: The Character of Ashes of the Ancestors

The cover of the novella Ashes of the Ancestors

Ashes of the Ancestors is all about the different ways we relate to the past, and I created the characters to reflect that. If you’ve read the book, then you’ve probably worked all of this out by now, but for the curious, here’s a guide to what the different characters represented to me.

And because this includes some characters I had to cut at an early stage, it’s also a chance to meet more of the ghosts, to see what could have been…

Magdalisa

As the story’s protagonist, Magdalisa has the most complex relationship with the past. At the start, she’s trying to preserve it out of a sense of duty, but by the end, she learns not to be held back by it. She’s what I wish we could all ultimately be: learning from the past but not beholden to it.

Adrana

Adrana wants to wipe away the past, in the most true and literal sense, demolishing a place where the past is preserved and wiping out a ghost living there. That’s understandable, because her past is a place of deep hurt. She represents a lot of people for whom the history we tell doesn’t contain much good, and who see history used to oppress them and hold them in place.

Olweth

Olweth wants to profit from the past. She’s Victorian adventurer archaeologists. She’s trashy historical theme parks. She’s bad Hollywood movies that don’t give a shit about historical truth. The past for her is only as important as the money it can bring in.

Lorkas

Our friendly neighbourhood warlord wants to learn from the past, but not in a good way. He doesn’t care about questions like “who got hurt?” or “what were the consequences?” He just wants to know how to fight a better battle.

Chryssania

Chryssania represents the romanticisation of history. She’s a glamorous, saintly ruler, the sort who’s often held up in real life as a grand source of inspiration. She’s history with the grubby bits rubbed off, all the dirt and misery wiped away so that we can focus on something shiny. That makes her dangerous, because her glamour blinds people to the rest of the truth. She discourages Magdalisa from embracing change, just like these glamorous pasts can discourage us from exploring new possibilities for the future.

Serafios

Serafios represents a desire to make up for the past. The ghost of a former crusader, he now recognises the terrible nature of the things he did, and he wants to make amends. Unfortunately, he’s powerless to do so, except by refusing to cooperate with the jackasses of the current age.

Is Serafios the noblest ghost, because he’s trying to fix things? No, because he’s still the guy who did those dreadful things. But at least he acknowledges them, at least he allows for regret and for justice.

Eras

Eras, the new ghost on the block, represents resentment of the past and of those who came before, in particular resenting the burdens they pass down. She resents the older ghosts, because she thinks they didn’t have as hard a time as her earning their fame and immortality. She’s resented in turn by Adrana, for the things that Eras did.

Sometimes resentment is justified. Sometimes not so much.

Fotio

Ah, poor Fotio, the ghost of a whore who somehow wound up as my favourite character. Fotio represents ignoring the past, as shown by how the other ghosts, especially Chryssania, ignore him. He’s the messy, unfortunate parts that many people would rather not think about, but he’s also people not caring about the past at all. Poor Fotio.

And now for the ones who didn’t make the cut…

Vetreas

The ghost of a self-important bishop, Vetreas was meant to embody people being held back by history and the past. An arch traditionalist, even more consciously wedded to history than Chryssania, Vetreas would have discouraged Magdalisa from asking questions, expressing herself, or embracing change. He was the worst ghost, and the one Magdalisa would have most struggled with.

Vetreas made it into an early version of the start of the story, but writing that scene made me realise that a large cast was slowing things down. I took what he represented and rolled it up in the romanticisation of the past that was Chryssania, because those two things aren’t the same, but they were close enough for a novella.

Ilippa

The ghost of a poor woman now serving the other ghosts for eternity, Ilippa symbolised the need to interrogate history. As well as raising questions about the past through her very existence, she would have talked to Magdalisa at key points and encouraged her to question her assumptions about the past.

In the end, there wasn’t space to explore this thread, and I think that the story is stronger for her absence. The existence of a ghostly servant would have undermined the significance of the living priests, and the inclusion of a second low status ghost would have made Fotio’s position less distinctive and powerful in the narrative.

How we interrogate history is a whole theme of its own that I should probably write a story about sometime.

Zenovini

The ghost of a scholar, Zenovini would have shared her knowledge of the past with the others, symbolising the way that we learn from history. But looking at how the story panned out, she was clearly redundant. The whole of the Eternal Abbey was there for people to learn from the past, it didn’t need another ghost for that.

Of course, these aren’t the only ways of relating to the past, or the only aspects of that relationship you can read into my characters (death of the author, and all that). Maybe you found something else in one of the characters, or thought I missed an important angle on all of this. Let me know over on one of the social spaces.

And if you enjoyed Ashes of the Ancestors enough that you want more like it, you can sign up to my mailing list for monthly stories and updates on future releases.

Ashes of the Ancestors: How I Almost Wrote Too Much Story

Ashes of the Ancestors had a slightly unusual beginning, and a writing process that didn’t go the way it normally does.

Back in June 2021, I submitted a novel to Luna Press. In her rejection email, Francesca said that there was a lot to like about it, but that it wouldn’t fit with Luna’s novel line. She asked if I’d be able to trim it down to novella length, for a submission window coming up in 2022.

It’s great when editors and publishers give you an encouraging sort of rejection, and I like to seize those opportunities. After all, when someone asks to see a revised version of a story, you know that they’re interested in something about it. But that novel was too unwieldy to trim down below 40,000 words, so instead I decided to treat this encouragement as motivation to write something new. An editor liked how I wrote a story, so I’d write something specifically for her call.

I went diving into my big Evernote file of writing ideas, a rich mulch of snippets and concepts that’s been slowly composting into inspiration for years, and pulled out the idea of writing something about history and tradition, themes close to my heart. Of course, I needed something more concrete to hang the story on, but there was also a note about a monastery full of ghosts. Nothing speaks to the past like ghosts, so it seemed a perfect fit.

I tend to go heavy on my planning when I write. I find that stories flow best for me if I’ve got a sturdy structure to work with. Sometimes that planning gets very intricate, as I weave in all the ideas that have been floating around over years of considering a story.

For Ashes, I started with the characters. Having different characters to represent different approaches to history and tradition seemed a good way of expressing my theme. The different approaches could directly conflict through those characters. So I created a bunch of characters with different history-related agendas, from casting off the past to wallowing in it. Then I worked out what plots would arise from their interactions, mapped out the highs and lows of those plotlines, and spaced those beats out into a sensible number of chapters for a novella of up to 40,000 words. So far, so good.

Normally, my next step would be to write the whole story, but this time I hit a snag. It very quickly became clear that I wasn’t used to novella length stories. I had too much going on, and within a couple of thousand words, I could see that it wouldn’t fit.

I went back and worked out which characters, with their own plot arcs and story strands, I could lose while still keeping the core of the story. That hurt. I was pleased with my outline and proud of how clever I’d been in making these lovely symbolic characters. But I forced myself to ditch or combine a bunch of them and rewrite the outline around their absence.

This time it worked. Based on that outline, I hammered through the first draft of Ashes of the Ancestors in less than a month.

By the end of that, I already had some ideas of things I could do better, what I wanted to emphasise or add more of. So I went back through for an edit, tidying up prose and reinforcing characters, then sent it out to some lovely beta readers, all of whom had previously given me useful feedback on my work.

The beta readers came back to me with comments on the book’s strengths and weaknesses, and some general ideas for changes to make it stronger, most of which I used and a few of which I decided didn’t fit what I was after. Other people can give you a more objective perspective on your work, but that doesn’t mean that everything they suggest will fit your aims. This isn’t improv, and knowing when to say no is as important as mostly saying yes. Before editing, I compiled the comments from different readers together, grouping them by chapter where relevant, or by some other connecting thread, for example stylistic stuff or comments on a particular character. That meant that I could compare comments, see the recurring themes, and not end up revising the same thing multiple times.

After I’d done those edits, I read the book once more to look for any mistakes I’d added during the editing, before setting it aside. It waited on my hard drive until Luna Press opened their submission window for novellas, and then it was out of my hands.

Writing this book was immensely satisfying. I learned some valuable things about my craft, including what’s too much plot for a novella. And I’ve produced something good enough to get published.

Here’s hoping I can pull that trick off again.

If you’ve gotten something from this, or you’ve got you own experiences of the writing process to share, then why not find me on Mastodon or Twitter and tell me about them.

And if what you’ve read so far has got you intrigued, you can buy Ashes of the Ancestors here:

Luna Press for physical books

Kobo ebook

Amazon ebook

Grappling With History and Tradition

Ashes of the Ancestors is a rare thing for me, a story that arose out of its theme. Normally, I’m there for a character or a setting or a plot idea, but this one was all about the theme, because it’s a theme that matters a lot to me. That theme is how we relate to history and tradition.

I’ve spent a lot of my life pondering history. I caught a fascination with the past off my dad, and went on to do two degrees in history, as well as two years research towards a PhD I never finished, all about military and political prisoners in medieval Britain. When I got into freelance writing, I used that background to get gigs, and I’ve written hundreds of articles making history accessible. I write comics with historical settings for Commando. I’m known by some people at SFF conventions as the history guy, thanks to my ranting on panels about the sins of Braveheart and William Gibson’s magical time travelling penis.

Even when I’m making up imaginary worlds, I draw a lot of my inspiration from the real past. My writing notes are full of concepts drawn from history books. But history itself is seldom the thing I’m tackling.

This time is different.

For me, there’s a tension in how I relate to the past. History and tradition get used to justify a lot of conservative politics, while my knowledge of the past has made me ever more left leaning. Some people look at the past and want to cling to it. I look to it as an object lesson out of which we can learn what not to do, so that we can build something new, something better.

All of that was already swirling around in my head, and then I came across a couple of quotes that crystalised my thoughts. One was from Haruki Murakami, who said:

“History is the shared narrative that binds us together or tears us apart.”

The other came from Jeannette Ng in an award acceptance speech:

“Let us be better than the legacies that have been left us, let them not be prophecies.”

Those two sentences say a lot to me about how we relate to history and the sense of tradition with which it is connected.

History can be used as something we share, something we bond over, something that gives us collective purpose. When its meaning and its use are inclusive, that’s wonderful and powerful. But it can also be something that’s used to justify exclusion and violence, to draw a line between us and them, to say to people that they can’t be themselves because that’s not how things were in the past, even though that’s often untrue.

That’s a powerful lesson, but it’s useless if it doesn’t give us direction. That’s why I think Ng’s comment is so important. While Murakami helps us understand how the past affects us, Ng provides a way to relate to it as we go forward with our lives. Legacies are valuable things, but that doesn’t mean we should repeat them. We can always strive to do better, to build on what came before and make something new.

Ashes of the Ancestors is all about the different ways we relate to history. Some of the characters in the story want to cling to it, others to reject it. But in my opinion, neither of those is healthy or helpful. What works best for us as individuals and as a society is to see history, to learn from it, and then to step out from under its shadow.

It’s a theme that’s so embedded in Ashes that individual characters represent different approaches to the past. Maybe I’ll talk about that another day. For now, Ashes of the Ancestors is coming out next Tuesday, 7 February. You can pre-order the book through the Luna Press website and many good booksellers. And if you want more of my thoughts or to hear about upcoming stories, you can sign up to my mailing list.

Writing About Writing

Author wielding a pile of his books and grinning.

It’s a busy week by my standards, as two articles about my work have sprung up in the past few days.

First, there’s an interview about my upcoming novella Ashes of the Ancestors over at the Scifi and Fantasy Network. I had a fun time talking about writing life, history, & the literary importance of Winnie the Pooh.

Second, I’ve written an article about ghostwriting for Canadian genre magazine On Spec. This is the article that my previous Q&A was leading to, and provides a more detailed and coherent dive into what it means to be a ghostwriter in the modern market. It covers the nature of the work and how to get into it, so if that’s something you’re curious about, then check it out.

And if, after all of that, you’d like to see more from me, Ashes of the Ancestors is out in just a few weeks. It’s a fantasy story about memory, empire, and grappling with the past, and you can find links to preorder it over here.

A Ghostwriting Q&A

After a decade working as a ghostwriter, I take a lot of what I do for granted. So when I was asked to write an article about this work, I realised that I didn’t know what to say. I needed to find out what outsiders find interesting about this strange craft.

Fortunately, that’s easy research. I took to Mastodon and Twitter looking for questions, and quickly got them. The article will be up soon on another site, and I’ll link to it. But in the meantime, for the sake of posterity, here’s the ghostwriting QA I did along the way. A few questions have been edited together for brevity, and this isn’t my slickest work, but if you’ve ever wondered how ghostwriting works, then hopefully you’ll find this of interest…

Q:
How do you find “the voice”? Be it a brand, or another writer, what’s the process in learning their style? Also, how do you lose that voice to write something different

A:
I mostly find the voice through reading the client’s work, looking for patterns in their writing and distinctive features. The ticks I hate most are often the ones their readers love, & that I should imitate.

Sometimes for business writing it’s about reading competitors too. I’m crafting the voice the client wants, not the one they have.

And the real dirty secret of this, some people don’t have very distinctive styles. They follow familiar patterns for their genre/industry. That makes matching the style very easy, because there isn’t much of one.

Q:
I’d be interested to know how much of yourself (your own personality, interests, opinions) you find yourself drawing upon, and whether doing so seems OK or something to suppress. Also, how do you “let go”?

A:
This depends on the project. I’m more likely to get a job if it’s relevant to my existing knowledge & experience, & then drawing on my interests is part of the job. Both for that & for other projects, using things I’m interested in can lead to more passionate & informed writing.

But sometimes I just have to ignore my own tastes. I have clients whose books hold no interest for me, but their readers love them. At that point, my job is to set myself aside & write what those readers want, even if I think they have terrible taste!

As for letting go, take a deep breath and think of the money. It helps that this is a substitute for my day job, not my own creative writing, which I still have time for. Bitter experience has taught me to detach myself better from the work, because I’m the writer not the author, & the client has the right to use the text how they want. I’ve still sometimes winced at edits I don’t like, but then I let go & move on to the next page.

Q:
If you have ideas, victories, strokes of genius, unique and cunning plot devices, how do you stay dispassionate about someone else consistently getting the by-line?

A:
I’ve got no shortage of ideas, the problem is finding time to write them. So I save the best ones for myself, & that’s enough. Most of the time, the ideas I like best are ones that wouldn’t suit my clients & their readers anyway, & the stories they’re after aren’t ones I want my name on.

Q:
I guess mostly if you regret that you can’t tell people about certain lines or characters you’ve created that you adore and are proud of, but can’t claim as your own.

A:
Mostly I’m OK with that, because I keep my favourite ideas for myself. It helps that my clients often want the sorts of protagonists that I don’t like, so I don’t get attached. But I’ve had one or two side characters that I’ve got fond of, where it would be nice to tell people about them.

Q:
I’m interested in the how and where? Like how did you end up doing ghost writing? Where do you find the jobs? Are the schedules tighter than with other writing jobs? Do you deal with an editor directly or just hand in a MS that’s unedited to the middle person?

A:
I got into it through a mix of experience & bloody mindedness. I’d done a lot of business writing in another job, & sold some short stories in my spare time, so I knew I could write, but not whether I could make a living off it. I started bidding on small, poorly paid projects on hiring sites like Upwork, got ratings & reviews for those jobs, which let me get slightly better gigs, which over the months & years turned into things that pay well. Bidding on projects where I could use my existing experience & education was crucial, as it let me write with authority, stand out from the crowd, & do good work from the start.

I mostly find work through freelance hiring sites, though sometimes clients recommend me to others. Professional networking helps. I also got work once from someone who found my business website, but only once – this internet thing is overrated.

The schedules can be very tight. I sometimes write a draft of a novel each month for six to eight month stretches, with articles on the side.

Usually I just hand the draft to the client when it’s done, & they edit or hand it to their editor. I have occasionally worked directly with the client’s editor, & once worked on a project where the editor was editing a book I hadn’t finished yet, creeping up on me chapter by chapter through Google docs.

Q:
OK, here’s a question: what do you do when the person for whom you are ghost writing is clearly spinning you a pack of lies?

A:
I’ve never helped write an autobiography, so I don’t know how I’d handle it there.

The closest I’ve come to this was working for a cryptocurrency startup, before I learned about what a toxic garbage fire crypto is (I wouldn’t take that work now). As the job went along, it slowly dawned on me how much of what they were saying was hype & bullshit. I trod a careful line to stay honest while trying to stick to their narrative, & fortunately they ran out of real money to pay me before I had to say “too far, I won’t write this”.

Q:
Apart from that, what comes to mind is whether clients are hands-off after picking a ghostwriter or get more involved in needing to approve the text and/for asking for revisions.

A:
Depends on the client and my relationship with them. Some just leave me to it, some give regular feedback & direction as the chapters roll in. I often don’t see the final version, so I couldn’t say how many just accept what I give them without a few tweaks, but I don’t think many make big changes.

The oddest one (not in a bad way) was when I was part of the team producing stories for a non-existent author. We worked in Google docs, & I had notifications coming in when the editor made changes or comments to what I’d written. I could see them creeping up a few chapters behind me even as I wrote.

Q:
How did you get into it? Are the courses and classes I constantly see advertised worth it?

A:
I can’t advise on the courses and classes, as I’ve never taken them.

As for how I got into it, see above.

Q:
How does the pressure weigh up against your own writings?

A:
There’s more pressure time-wise, which means I get stuff done. That’s been good for improving my discipline as a writer.

There’s less pressure to write something bold, new, & exciting, because that’s seldom what my clients want, & because I’m not competing with other fiction writers for the attention of editors & agents.

Q:
Is there a minimum/maximum amount of input from the client you require/prefer?

A:
I prefer more input, as it means I’m more likely to write what they actually want, which avoids disputes later. But I’ve spun a whole novel out of a three-line brief, so actual requirements are low.

Q:
Is the connection to the story/world/characters as intimate as your own stuff? How do you prevent/manage bleed over inyour own work?

A:
The connection’s seldom as intimate – these aren’t my characters, even if I created them, they’re not designed to appeal to me, so it’s easier to let go.

As for bleed over, the sorts of stories my clients want are different enough from mine that I don’t think anything’s slipped form one into another. I approach them with a different mindset. I expect I’ve repeated a few notable phrases, because I forgot I’d already used a cool collection of words that pops into my brain, but at the macro scale, they’re very separate.

Q:
My question would be how one works with someone who has disagreeable views or problematic ones? Is one able to pick and choose, or are contracts flexible enough to avoid this?

A:
To some extenet, I pick and choose. For example, I don’t write for cryptocurrency people anymore, because of what I’ve learned about that tech.

Aside from that, I had a client once where hints of unpleasant views peeked around the edges of the project brief. I wrote the document within the boundaries of what I was comfortable with, submitted & got paid, & braced myself to say I was too busy next time he approached me. Never heard from him again.

That aside, I couldn’t ghostwrite fiction without sometimes having to write tropes I dislike, especially when it comes to the implications of gender roles. Unfortunately, that’s what some audiences & subgenres expect. I have lines I won’t cross, & I write these stories as progressively as I can get away with, drawing attention to the bullshit where I can. And the less problematic the client’s stories, the more likely I’ll work for them again.

Q:
How do you structure your rates? Did it take you a long time to be able to accurately estimate a project? What training did you receive? Do you only ghostwrite or do you offer other services too?

A:
My training is a mix of business writing experience from a past job & fiction writing experience I got in my spare time. No formal fiction qualifications, just a lot of time listening to Writing Excuses. The most relevant non-fiction training was the English element in my primary teacher training & on-the-job advice by a manager in a complaints team I worked in.

My rates depend on the structuring of the job. I have an hourly rate for research, planning and revision work, a per-word rate for fiction writing, & a different per-word rate for non-fiction writing. I put the rates up regularly, when I can get away with it, but sometimes accept lower rates when I need the work. If I have to provide an estimate for a whole project, it’s based on projected wordcount & the extent of planning, research, & revisions. Plus the inevitable sprinkling of guesswork.

I mostly only do writing for hire, which includes ghostwriting. Very occasionally I do editing or revisions, but I prefer writing when I can get it.

Q:
What do you like about ghostwriting, what kind of writers would you recommend it for?

A:
The best question!

I love writing as an activity, & ghostwriting lets me do that for a day job, instead of sitting in an office or a shop or something like that. The craft is the joy, & it’s made me better at my own writing.

I’ve also learned, from doing this, that I love working freelance. In an office, I had to tolerate the bullshit of people higher up the hierarchy. Now, if I don’t like working with someone, I just say I’m too busy for their work. Or if I need the money too much to say that, then the fact that I’ve made that choice makes the bullshit bearable.

I’d recommend it for writers who can sit down and force themselves to write when they need to. If you’re the sort of writer who can do that, then it’s a great way to develop your writing muscles. But if your writing comes to you in bursts of inspiration or brief flashes after which you need to go let your mind rest & the subconscious do its thing, then this isn’t for you.

Writing is exercise for the brain. It’s strengthening, but it’s also tiring. The merits of this work depend upon how you balance those two things.

So there we go, a bunch of Qs and some rough As. I’ve written a more polished and insightful article based partly on this, which I’ll link to when it goes live. And if you’ve got a question that I haven’t answered here, feel free to ask me on Mastodon or Twitter, I’m always happy to talk about my work.

How I Write a Commando Comic

My latest issue of Commando is out today, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to write about how I create a script. Buckle in, this is going to be one of my longer posts…

Inspiration

Desert Vultures cover art by Neil Roberts

My inspiration for Commando comics can come from a bunch of different places. TV shows, larp events, conversations on Twitter, things I studied at university, these have all fed into issues. Most come from plugging together more than one source.

The immediate inspiration for Desert Vultures was the 80^th anniversary of Operation Compass, the first big Allied push of the Western Desert Campaign. Anniversaries are handy things for Commando, as they’re a good way to hook people into an issue. Sometimes my editor at Commando will send me a list of anniversaries they’d like to cover, and I pitch to those. Sometimes I spot an opportunity and suggest it myself.

My biggest source of inspiration, as I recently discussed in a video interview, is history books. I read a lot of them, sometimes for pleasure, sometimes for other writing projects. Back when I was writing for War History Online, I read a lot about the Second World War, which meant that I already had ideas for how to look at the Western Desert campaign.

When looking for a Commando story, I’m often looking for a conflict between people on the same side, not just a fight against the enemy. In-group conflicts often lead to more interesting stories, as characters argue and compete with each other – think about all the twists and tensions in Game of Thrones. I also like to cover the international nature of the Allied war effort. Fortunately, bringing people from different backgrounds together often causes conflict, so that became the hook for Desert Vultures – French and British officers forced to work together despite their differences, one of them rigidly rule-bound, the other relaxed and improvisational. Could they achieve a shared goal?

Pitching

Once I’ve got my inspiration, I write a pitch. This sets out the story in two ways – first as a three-sentence synopsis, giving the setting, the main character, and the hook for their story. Then a page-by-page breakdown of what will happen.

When I’m writing the pitch, my thinking is shaped by two things – the characters and the plot. As Robert McKee points out in his excellent book Story, these two aren’t separate, but it can still be useful to talk about them that way.

The character is the core of a Commando story. Readers have to care about the people they’re spending time with. That means making someone who’s interesting to Commando readers, and who will drive the story forward. There are dozens of different ways to achieve this, and I always consider the balance of competence, proactivity, and likability, as recommended by the team at Writing Excuses. Most importantly, the protagonist has to want something, to keep them motivated.

The nature of Commando does a lot to define the comic’s protagonists. They have to be involved in military activity, usually during the world wars. They need to have a mission or objective, something that propels the story forward, whether it’s saving lives, sinking a submarine, or perhaps escaping occupied territory. For Desert Vultures, it’s a specific military mission – finding and destroying a hidden Italian base.

The story is then driven by this mission. What does the protagonist have to do to achieve their objective? Who stands in the way? What setbacks do they face? I structure the broad strokes of the story around this, then flesh it out with cool details, often found in those books I mentioned. Give the plot a few twists, and I’ve soon got 63 bullet points, one for every page.

I send my pitch to my editor at Commando, then wait. After an editorial meeting, they come back to me with one of three responses:

Yes, write it! My favourite response, for obvious reasons.
No, this isn’t suitable. This one doesn’t happen often, as I have a good idea of what Commando are after, but just occasionally an idea isn’t right for them, or has already been used.
Yes, but… The most common response. I’ve got a good idea, but it needs refinement. This might lead to a revised pitch, or just to me making some changes as I write the script.

Writing

Once the pitch has been approved and the outline adjusted, it’s time to write. My deadline is usually two or three months ahead, but I seldom wait that long, as I love writing comic scripts. As a fulltime freelance writer, I have the flexibility to make space in my schedule, but other projects sometimes have first dibs, especially if they’re on a deadline or offering a big payment. Within a few weeks of approval, I set aside some days when my focus will be on writing my script.

Having a detailed outline makes the writing relatively quick. I don’t have to think about the broad strokes of what’s on each page, just the details. How many pictures will there be? How will one lead to another, telling a clear and coherent story? What will everyone say?

For the flow of the images, a lot of my inspiration and guidance comes from comics guru Scott McCloud. His writing on comics is phenomenal and taught me about such critical topics as transitions. A comic isn’t just a bunch of pictures, it’s what’s implied by the way you move from one to the next, and thinking about that adds a lot of complexity.

I’ve recently changed my approached to scripting. At the time I wrote Desert Vultures, I wrote everything for one page, then moved on to the next, and so on, writing the descriptions and dialogue together. I’ve recently changed to writing all the descriptions first, then going back to the start and adding the dialogue. I find that works better for getting character voices right.

I’m no artist, but I do occasionally draw at the writing stage, to help me plan out the action. The things I draw are normally seen only by me and my waste paper bin, because I’m a terrible artist. But drawing can help me work out the flow of the panels, breaking a page down into a series of distinct images, each one with its own unique elements that together tell a story. Many stick men have died brutal deaths on scrap paper battlefields to improve my Commando scripts.

Writing dialogue is a funny thing. It’s never about being realistic, but it is about sounding realistic. In real life, people um and ah, they let sentences trail off and leave things half-said. They don’t deliver snappy dialogue while they’re busy fighting for their lives. But a story requires dialogue that flows while creating the illusion of people really talking. In the case of a comic like Commando, it means dreaming up things people could say while bullets whip past their heads or they punch each other in the face. It’s a fun challenge to create that sort of dialogue without it coming out stilted.

Creating distinct voices is important too. I’m the first to admit that I don’t always manage this, but if a character’s verbal ticks and preoccupations stand out, that makes them seem more real.

But the most important thing about writing isn’t any of these technical details. It’s sitting your arse down in the chair and having the discipline to keep going, even when you’re bored or distracted. Discipline, more than anything else, is how I get a script done.

Editing

Before I send a script off, I read it over a couple more times and make edits. This is usually just proofreading, as I’ve done my story edits at the pitching stage. Sometimes it’s adding more detail to the action of an image or sharpening up a piece of dialogue. Mostly, it’s finding my typos and grammatical errors.

If I have time, I leave a day or two between writing and editing. That way I can look at the script with fresh eyes. But the brutal truth is, often I need to be moving on to my next project. Then the script just gets left until after lunch, then given that polish and sent on its way.

Out of My Hands

From that point on, my work is done. The script vanishes into the ether for months on end, only to re-emerge some time later as a fully formed comic. To me, it’s magic, but this is where the hard work happens. I could never create the amazing images that Commando’s artists come up with. You’d have to ask one of them if you want to know how that part works.

Sometimes I’ll see the cover or snippets of art as Commando HQ build buzz for a release, but I don’t see the interiors until the issue comes out. This is also the point at which I get to read editorial changes to the story – how the team at Commando have sharpened up my dialogue, expanded on descriptive panels, or adjusted the plot beats to make the story even more exciting. The thrill of seeing a new Commando is as real for me the writer as for anyone reading it.

With a script finished, it’s time to go back to the beginning. Seek inspiration. Invent a character. Craft a pitch. Sit my arse down in my chair and start work on the next issue.

The circle of writing starts again.

Building a Better Fantasy City with Ex Novo

I’ve enthused before about the joys of world-building games like Microscope and Watching the World Die. I love the way that random chance and the structure of a rule set can lead to rich, surprising places that feel organic, coherent, and interesting.

I recently needed to develop the setting for a new story, and as it was set in a city I decided to try out a game designed for this very purpose – Ex Novo by Martin Nerurkar and Konstantinos Dimopoulos.

Ex Novo is simple to play and takes only a few hours. Most importantly given recent circumstances, you can play it solo. I was creating my city during lockdown, and while my cat does like to play with dice, he’s not so great at urban planning.

Play turned out to be pretty simple. You decide a few basic parameters, including the size and age of your settlement. Then you roll dice and check a couple of tables to determine the terrain it’s founded in and why it’s there. After that, you play a series of rounds in which you roll more dice, look up the results on tables, and add features to the map depending upon those results.

Those randomised additions might sound like a recipe for something disjointed, but that’s not how the game works. Every random choice is both specific and open to interpretation, accompanied by questions that invite you to flesh out the details. Role 325 and you’re adding a new trade route, represented by a resource on the map, but what the resource is, where it goes, who it’s traded with and how, these are all open to interpretation. Just adding that resource to the map creates a relationship between it and other parts of the city, which encourages answers that built on what came before.

It helps that the example game plays a little loose with the rules, in the interests of a better narrative. This encourages flexibility, adding extra details while benefiting from the structure the rules bring.

I’d expected this game to just create a map, but it’s more than that. It creates a history for the city, a history tied to that map. It also creates political factions and develops the conflicts between them, showing the politics and society of your city. As a writer building a setting, that’s incredibly useful for me. It means that my characters have a past to talk about and other people to interact with, enriching my writing.

But the map, that’s the most useful thing. I don’t normally bother with a map while writing. I might sketch out where named places are compared with each other, for the sake of consistency. But this game has given me districts, public buildings, surrounding terrain, roads, walls, and ruins. Any time my characters travel from place to place, I can look at that map and get instant, surprising inspiration about what they’ll see.

This sort of game isn’t going to be for everyone, but if you like making up stories and imagining places then it can be a great tool, and with the designers currently letting you name your own price, Ex Novo is a bargain.