The CaT Gazette/Writing Lessons

Starting with Issue 44, (almost) every issue of the Gazette comes with a writing lesson usually requested by the readers of the Gazette themselves. Since I'm bad at remembering what I've already covered and you might want to review these lessons without going through each individual issue, here's a page collecting those lessons.

Lesson 1: Run-On Sentences (Issue 44)
Have you ever been listening to someone drone on and on and wishing they would just shut up already? Well, run-on sentences are kind of like that, but for your readers.

A run-on sentence, to be more precise, is a sentence made up of two or more different statements, AKA Independent Clauses, that could be separated by periods. For example: Doesn't something about that sentence rub you the wrong way? That's because this sentence is made up of three Independent Clauses; one is a statement about deciding to go to the beach, one tells us they got to the beach, and one tells us they put on sunscreen. To correct this sentence, you simply need to add some punctuation like so: Note that the second and third clauses were separated by a comma instead of a period. If I had used a period, it would have interrupted the flow of words and become a Fragmented Sentence, which is basically the opposite problem and an issue for next week. Note that using a comma to join clauses into a sentence isn't always a good idea. For example: This kind of run-on sentence is called a Comma Splice. It occurs when you use a comma to haphazardly join two different statements. A comma splice is never good on it's own; however, it can be fixed by adding a Conjunction (and, but, for, nor, yet, or, so) like so: Note that if your sentence is getting too long via overuse of conjunctions, you should replace some of them with straight-up periods. On the other hand, keep in mind that a sentence doesn't always have to be long to be a run-on sentence; it just has to have separate statements forced into a single line.
 * We decided to go to the beach when we got to the beach I put on sunscreen.
 * We decided to go to the beach. When we got to the beach, I put on sunscreen.
 * We decided to go the beach, when we got to the beach, I put on sunscreen.
 * We decided to go to the beach, and when we got to the beach, I put on sunscreen.

That's about it for this week, so it's time for a pop quiz! Try to figure out which of the following are run-on sentences, and then open the Spoiler Text to see if you were right!
 * 1) I did not want to eat my broccoli it tasted gross I threw it on the ground.
 * 2) I didn't think highly of my neighbor, Suzy, but I still went to her funeral after she hit that deer.
 * 3) Shrek is love Shrek is life.

Lesson 2: Its VS It's & Your VS You're (Issue 45)
I like you are writing style. You are story's greatest strength is in it is characters.

If the above sentences are borderline incomprehensible to you, you might have an idea as to why these contractions are important to get right.

Its VS It's and Your VS You're are commonly confused phrases, especially on this wiki, so I figured taking a lesson to clear them up would be handy.

The clear-up primarily boils down to the contractions. "Its" is a singular word that implies possession, whereas "It's" is a contraction for the phrase "It is". Similarly, "Your" is also a singular word that implies possession, whereas "You're" is a contraction for the phrase "You are". An easy way to remember it is that the apostrophe ( ' ) changes the meaning.

That's about it for this week, so it's time for a pop quiz! Try to figure out which of the following contractions are used correctly, and then open the Spoiler Text to see if you were right!
 * 1) It's time to seize the means of production.
 * 2) I am going to steal you're memes.
 * 3) Orange may be the new black, but have you considered it's relation to the color white?

Lesson 3: Emoticons in Writing (Issue 46)
👆👀👆👀👆👀👆👀👆👀 waaay up tHere 👆 moRTY ✔ im gonna need 👆 🌱 u to put these seeds 🌱👆🌱waaaay 👆up inside🌱🌱 ur✔butthOle✔✔🍑mo-EURGH-rty 🌱👆👆👆wa𝖺𝖠AY up there 👆 morty 🌱 way up 👆 into your butthole (chorus: ᵇᵘᵗᵗʰᵒˡᵉ) mMMMMᎷМ🍑 O0ОଠＯଠOooᵒᵒᵒᵒRR𝖱ᵣᵣTTY𝖸𝖸YY 👆🌱👆 🍑 👀👀 👀 👆 👆✔ waaay up there

Read that sentence twice, scoop the gray matter melting out of your ears back into your skull, and then proceed to read it again. Now, you might be wondering why I would use this thing as an example for this week's lesson, since it's obviously just a joke. Of course, you're right, it is just a joke.

Now imagine if it was done in complete sincerity and you'll get an inkling of why using emoticons in your writing is a shit idea.

This is mostly a problem on older stories, granted, but I still see some newer users doing this today, and it's seriously obnoxious. I get it, using an emoticon is an easy way of telling the reader what the character is feeling, but there's a reason "show, don't tell" is a rule. Try describing how the character is acting or emoting and allow the audience to pick up on the emotions for themselves.

That's about it for this week, so it's time for a pop quiz! Try to figure out in which sentences it is acceptable to use emoticons, and then open the Spoiler Text to see if you were right!
 * 1) Ben makes a '._.' face.
 * Ben: O_o
 * 1) As he realized what had happened to the little girl and the dog, a look of sheer " (°Д°) " crept across Ed's face.

Lesson 4: Inspiration (Issue 48)
Inspiration is a big part of the creative process, but it's also a very vague part. Where exactly might one obtain the elusive "Inspiration"? The answer to that is...everywhere!

You gotta think outside of the box when you're going about your day to day life. Look around you. That flowerpot on your neighbor's porch? That could make for a pretty dank alien. That USB stick attached to your computer? That could be a sweet Omnitrix. That weird pothole in the road that everyone complains about? That could become an entire episode! The possibilities are endless with enough applied creativity!

The key is looking at everything you see from a new angle. When you look at the flowerpot, try not to look at it as a singular whole, but rather, a series of ideas combined to create something useful. What about it allows it to serve its purpose? What are the individual aspects of it that you could apply to your own creations? What is the true nature of being a flowerpot? Even if you don't find anything particularly interesting in the flowerpot (since, you know, it's a flowerpot), it still serves as a fantastic exercise in the type of creative thinking necessary to become a good author.

No quiz this week, since this isn't really the type of lesson for that; however, I am giving out an assignment to anyone interested. Take a look at one of the objects to your immediate left and use it for the basis of a new alien. The alien doesn't have to be particularly detailed; simply described enough for someone to get the general idea of what it's like. Reply to this thread with the resulting alien, and I'll give you some feedback on it. This is an exercise in creativity, so try to make it as interesting as possible without moving away from the "source material", as it were. Have fun!

Lesson 5: Self-Insert OCs (Issue 49)
This is admittedly more of a problem for stories created when "[Name] 10" series were all the rage, but they still pop up on the wiki from time to time, and there's really quite a bit of misinformation about the subject despite how straightforward it seems.

Generally speaking, a self-insert OC is usually little more than a vehicle for the author's own fantasies and daydreams. While there's nothing wrong with fantasy escapism, relying solely on the idea of escapism to engage your audience, especially when there are a million characters just like yours out there...doesn't work very well, to say the least.

Now, contrary to popular belief, the idea of a self-insert OC isn't exclusively bad and can actually be pulled off well...assuming the author knows how. Considering that the majority of people jump right from using bad self-inserts to hating the idea altogether, these examples are fairly rare, if not necessarily hard to pull off.

When using yourself as a basis for your character, your goal should be to make your character realistic instead of idealized. Idealized self-inserts are boring Mary Sue-ass shits that you might as well toss in your local dumpster fire. Realistic self-inserts will be more interesting because they represent an actual person, and actual people are generally more relatable than idealized cardboard cutouts.

To create a realistic self-insert, you should give your character your flaws as well as your strengths. This can be difficult if you're not one for introspection, but all you really have to do in that scenario is ask around. I'm sure everyone around you will be able to point out plenty of crappy things about your personality.

Of course, there are ways to make self-inserts that are good while still not being realistic persay. A lot of these methods should be examined on a case-by-case basis, but my personal favorite type of unrealistic self-insert is the Self-Parody.

Self-Parodies are characters that take their creator's faults and eccentricities and dial them up to eleven. For examples on this wiki, there's Sol Masquerade, whose entire character motivation is getting some tail, and CaT (Character), who's basically a slightly moronic sociopath who screws with people to entertain himself. These characters get away with not being realistic by being played for comedy, a genre which can blatantly disregard realism for the sake of a joke.

To reiterate, having a self-insert isn't always a bad thing; hell, it can even be downright good as long as you do it correctly.

Unfortunately, most of you cannot do it correctly, and should probably just stick to writing characters unrelated to yourselves.

Lesson 6: Writer's Block (Issue 50)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

The end.

Okay so that's obviously not the actual lesson, but it certainly feels that way sometimes, right? Everyone struggles with writer's block at some point or another, and it can get extremely frustrating. So, what exactly is writer's block and how can you deal with it? That's what I'll be going over with you today!

To begin with, writer's block is a psychological phenomena generally associated with, well, writing, where someone finds themselves unable to generate creative output either as well as they used to or even at all. Writer's block has been documented throughout history, so it's not exactly a recent problem.

Writer's block can be caused by a variety of things, such as loss of motivation, lack of inspiration, distraction thanks to other things, insecurity in your writing, etc. etc.; something to note is that the majority of these issues can be traced back to stress in one way or another. Extreme stress from any source can lead to feeling burned out and unmotivated, especially in your creative pursuits.

Even aside from all that, stress can actually cause a direct switch in how your brain processes things, switching focus from your cerebral cortex (your creative thinky bits) to the limbic system (your survival thinky bits) and thus making you feel creatively "blocked" since you quite literally aren't processing creativity as well. I'd recommend reading this thesis paper on the subject if you're interested; it's a fairly engaging and eye-opening read that goes into detail about this subject.

So, how does one overcome writer's block? There's no 100% guaranteed miracle method that's going to work for everybody, but the major thing to work on is learning how to destress and approach your writing in a healthier manner. The paper I linked goes into detail about this, so again, I recommend reading it, but for a quick summary, things like breathing exercises, meditation, listening to relaxing music, actual exercise (which the majority of you need more of anyways), and taking a step back to think about what you're writing instead of desperately trying to crap out words onto a screen are all great steps to overcoming writer's block.

The main thing to keep in mind is not to give up or procrastinate, as tempting as those options might seem; you won't be getting anywhere, and you'll ultimately just make yourself feel worse about the whole thing.

So, to sum this all up:
 * Writer's block is usually caused by stress.
 * Destressing techniques can help you overcome it.
 * Procrastination isn't going to help so STOP WATCHING THAT YOUTUBE VIDEO ABOUT A CAT THROWING UP FOR THE FIFTIETH TIME AND GET SOME EXERCISE OR SOMETHING DAMMIT

Researching this topic was actually fairly helpful for me, and I hope this lesson will come in handy for you too.

Lesson 7: Detailed Writing (Issue 51)
The guy went to the thing and did the other thing and then the thing happened and the end.

Thrilling story, right?

What do you mean no?

A problem a lot of novice writers run into (especially on this wiki) is not including proper details in their stories, thus making the majority of them feel somewhat bland, repetitive, and not much different from the epic tale of majesty I just regaled you with. So, how do you use detail in your writing? Well, it'll vary from story to story depending on what you're going for exactly, but there are some ground rules to keep in mind:
 * Include Sensory Descriptions - The sensation your writing is going to appeal to the most is sight; the majority of descriptions in a story are meant to help you visualize a scene, after all. However, it's important to remember that we have five sense in total for you to appeal to. When describing a scene or an object, think about what characteristics might stand out the most about it in real life and try to describe them to the reader. What does it smell like? What does it feel like to the touch? If these characteristics aren't particularly important to getting the idea across, you don't have to use them, but they can be very helpful.
 * Use Specific Phrasing - General statements like "I got a pizza" or "I walked down to the pier and fought a guy one time" might work if you mentioned them in passing, but if you want your audience to actually get something from them, you need to describe them a bit more. What size was the pizza? What were the toppings? Who were you fighting at the pier and why? Did you attempt to use the aforementioned pizza as a bludgeoning weapon? Remember, the audience you're describing a scene to can't read your mind, so writing down exactly what you mean for a scene is important.
 * Keep Track of Positioning - While generally applicable across the board, this rule is especially important in writing fight scenes or really any kind of dynamic action. When you write a scene involving a lot of motion, make sure you convey to the audience exactly where the characters are in relation to their target and/or their surroundings. This give readers a much clearer idea of exactly what the hell is going on. This rule should only be broken if you intentionally want to obscure the positions of your scene's players to build up suspense or something.

Keep in mind that overdoing the details with overly flowery descriptions and completely useless bits of information that really add nothing to the story or the scene can be just as grating as not including enough detail, if not even more so. It's all about finding the right balance, and while it takes a lot of practice to master, including the right amount of details is an invaluable tool in crafting your story in the best way possible.

Lesson 8: Overpowered Characters (Issue 52)
Picture this for a moment, if you will: you're sitting around watching Ben 10: Omniverse because you're a masochist, and you're watching the episode where Ben uses Alien X to unnecessarily wreck the brainwashed Amalgam Kids instead of just freeing them from the brainwashing. It's at this point that you realize something:

Nothing is really much of a threat anymore.

Sure, Ben's a dumbass, so he's definitely not going to take advantage of this, but with an alien that has the ability to reshape reality on a whim under his control, he could theoretically win any fight he wants to with a single thought. Sort of takes the tension out of the story, doesn't it?

This is a writing mistake that's proficient both on and off the wiki, but it's gotten to the point where the majority of series have an overpowered protagonist. Whether it be from a bunch of OP Omnitrix aliens or some other power of their own, reading about these protagonists is rarely engaging simply because the tension has been taken out of the story. When your character is incompetently overpowered, there's very little that can present a legitimate threat to them.

Of course, that's not to say you can't write an overpowered character well, or even that all extremely powerful characters are necessarily overpowered. If you're familiar with Tech 10 in any way, that would obviously be a hypocritical point for me to make. Here are a few tips to properly handle powerful characters and keep tension in the story. All in all, you should try to steer clear of making your characters overpowered if you don't have any balancing factors to keep their conflicts interesting. Master this, and congratulations! You're automatically a better writer than anyone on the Omniverse staff!
 * Keep Things Balanced - If your heroes are super powerful, you should make your villains at least as powerful (preferably even more so). If you have side characters you want to keep relevant, they should be getting some sort of power boosts too. You could technically keep jacking up the power levels as much as you want as long as you keep the story properly balanced while doing so. Basically just don't make anyone Krillin and you'll be gucci.
 * Emotionally Kneecap the Hero - Giving your protagonists emotional baggage is not only a great way to keep people invested in general, but it also helps to keep their powers from ruining the story. Giving them some reason not to use their power, usually in the form of some emotional trauma related to the power itself.
 * Make it Unpredictable - If the hero has no proper control over their overpowered abilities, then it keeps said abilities from ruining the story (kinda like how Alien X didn't break the franchise until Omniverse...). These abilities could do anything from just failing at the wrong times to going out of control and destroying everything around the hero, making them a liability to use.
 * Rock, Paper, Scissors - This is a pretty basic concept, but it's surprising how often it goes unutilized; you can give your character the biggest, best laser cannon you can think of, but if his opponent has an anti-biggest, best laser cannon shield, it ain't gonna do them any good. Your character can have any OP ability you want as long as there's someone who can counter it.

(No I'm not letting that go shut up)

Lesson 9: Action Scenes (Issue 53)
Have you ever seen an action scene in a really good movie, thought it was really good, and then watched a near-identical action scene in a subpar movie and thought it was pretty bad? There are only so many ways to do fight scenes, so why do such similar action sequences in media vary so much in quality? Well, let me explain to you a thing or two about action scenes.

The first thing you should know is that Action Scenes Are Boring. Yes, you read that right. Action scenes, in and of themselves, are boring. That's not to say you can't enjoy the spectacle of a particularly well-done fight; a spectacle that includes plenty of originality and care put into it is a basic part of making any good action scene, but spectacle can only get a scene so far, especially when almost every possible variation on a fight scene has already been done before.

What makes an action scene interesting are primarily the characters, and while I can't stress enough how important having a unique, well-thought out spectacle is to a fight, nobody's going to give a crap if the characters fighting are boring as sin. Action with characters the audience doesn't care about might as well just be blank space on a page for how much legitimate impact it leaves on the audience. Of course, introducing characters with a fight scene is a perfectly valid method of writing, but an action scene should convey something interesting about their personality while they're fighting.

Another important thing an action sequence should do is advance the plot or characters in some way. This might sound like obvious advice, but a lot of people just write action for the sake of the spectacle, which is how we get boring as sin filler-based series like the Pokemon anime or Kamen Rider Wizard. Wizard has some of the most aesthetically pleasing spectacle I've seen out of a Rider series, but god damn is it boring to watch. In short, filler action sequences (as well as filler anything else for the most part) is a big no-no.

Of course, even if you have your spectacle, characters, and plot advancement all figured out, none of that means shit if the audience doesn't know what's going on. I mentioned in a previous lesson how important it is to convey to the audience the positions of the characters, the basic layout of their environment, and the specific actions the characters take, and just writing scenes like "Jack and Jill punched each other on a boat" doesn't cut it. When creating these action scenes, try to envision exactly what they look like in your mind's eye; you don't have to get too detailed, since that could get a bit grating to read, but you have to make sure the audience knows what's going down, where it's going down, and how it's going down.

Come to think of it, this can all be summed up in the 5 W's of Punching Someone in the Face.

Yeah sure why not

Oh and I guess there's also the sixth W that people say counts even though it doesn't start with W that I'll include here anyway because it's vital to conveying the actions taken in an action scene
 * What happened involving face punching?
 * Who was punching the guy in the face, and who was the guy getting punched in the face?"
 * Where is the location of this man getting punched in the face?
 * When was this man punched in the face?
 * Why was this man punched in the face?
 * How was this man punched in the face?

That last one may not be a real "W" but remember it anyways so your action scenes don't suck. That's about it for tonight's lesson, so I'm going to go
 * What: Get wasted
 * Who: Me
 * Where: Right here
 * When: Right now
 * Why: Mama needs some happy juice
 * How: Shots

Lesson 10: Openings (Issue 54)
Say you're walking through a library and you have to decide between two books to read. You pick up one book and you look at the first line.

"Patrick yawned as he got out of bed. He had a busy school day ahead of him, and he didn't want to be late."

Enthralling.

So you put that book down and pick up the other one. The first line reads as follows:

"There was no way around it; he would have to jump if he wanted to live."

Naturally you check out the second book so fast you accidentally create a trail of sparks that sets the first book on fire. But what is it about the second book that makes it more appealing? For all you know, the first book's plot could eventually lead into one of the best stories you've ever read, but that hasn't done it much good. What gives?

The reason for all of this is that the most important part of the opening is the Hook.

The Hook is the part of your story that the readers see first. It can anything from a single word to an entire paragraph, but the important thing is to make it interesting. If your hook is interesting, people will probably want to read the rest if your story to see where you go with it. If it isn't, they won't really care.

So, how do you make a hook interesting? Well, there's a little thing humans have called curiosity. Give your audience a mystery to ponder, and they'll be putty in your hands. The mystery can be anything from "who stole my brownies" to "why are Captain Picard and Satan dueling each other with lightsaber chainsaws on top of Mount Vesuvius" just so long as you communicate that A: There is a question to be asked, and B: That question is worth answering.

Okay, so you've got your hook. What now?

To continue your story's opening, you should make sure you establish several things:
 * The type of story you're telling.
 * If your introduction gives the audience a particular genre and tone and it suddenly switches later on in the story, the audience might end up feeling confused and mildly betrayed by your indecisive tomfoolery. Only switch gears like this if you're aiming to create an intentional subversion, and even then, be careful with how you go about it.
 * Your main character.
 * If your beginning doesn't introduce your protagonist, it will be difficult for your audience to know who they're supposed to be caring about in this story.
 * Your setting.
 * If you're working with a fantasy setting, you should establish early on that you're working with more Mordor and less New York. If you don't, the audience might get confused when a story with a modern-day setting suddenly has elves in it with no explanation as to why.

Outside of that, there are way too many different variations on openings for me to cover how each one does and doesn't work. Openings can cover anywhere from a prologue to the first chunk of your story, just so long as you make sure everything is established fast enough to get people interested.

For more episodic mediums, you don't necessarily need to follow the conventional hook-establishment formula after your first episode or two, but you should still use a two-step version of the formula:
 * Establish what the episode is going to be about.
 * Introduce any important new characters or ideas that play a big role in the episode, even if it's just as a brief unclear cameo before they debut properly later in the episode. This will help you avoid Deus Ex Machinas, which we'll expand upon next week.

Obviously I haven't been able to cover absolutely everything about openings, but I think I've covered enough to give you a fairly solid start. Get out there and start hooking some readers!

Lesson 11: Deus Ex Machina (Issue 55)
So imagine you're watching one of the best, most tense and dramatic movies you've ever seen. The climax is almost over, the protagonists are screwed, the antagonists have pretty much won, and you're wondering how the hell they're going to turn all this around.

Then Jesus comes out and uses holy lasers to make the villains blow up.

Excuse me, what?

The source of the disappointment and frustration you'd be feeling at this random-ass plot point is called a Deus Ex Machina, translated as "god out of the machine". The phrase originates from ancient Greek theater, where actors playing Gods would literally be lowered down by a crane (the "machine") at the end of a play to fix everything without any prior buildup.

Note that even if a plot point is unexpected or unsatisfying, it is not necessarily a Deus Ex Machina; TV Tropes helpfully lists the four qualifying factors for a plot point to be considered one. The reason discussing this is so important is because there are so many stories on this damn wiki that end in "EVERYONE IS SCREWED BUT THIS NEW ALIEN I PULLED OUT OF MY ASS IS GOING TO SAVE THE DAY BECAUSE REASONS" that Category:Aliens might as well be renamed Category:Bullshit Endings.
 * 1) Deus ex Machina are solutions to a problem. They are never unexpected developments that make things worse, nor sudden twists that only change the understanding of a story.
 * 2) Deus ex Machina are sudden or unexpected. This means that even if they are featured, referenced or set-up earlier in the story, they do not change the course of nor appear as a natural or a viable solution to the plotline they eventually "solve".
 * 3) Deus ex Machina are used to resolve a situation portrayed as unsolvable or hopeless. If the problem could be solved with a bit of common sense or other type of simple intervention, the solution is not a Deus ex Machina no matter how unexpected it may seem.
 * 4) Deus Ex Machina are external to the characters and their choices throughout the story. The solution comes from a character with small or non-existent influence on the plot until that point or random chance from nature or karma.

This is a fairly simple concept to understand, so this is just more of a heads-up telling you to not pull shit out of your ass at the last moment. Yes, this trope can technically be used well, but most of the time it isn't, so I would recommend taking the four qualifications of the Deus Ex Machina to heart and blatantly defying them whenever possible.

Lesson 12: Making an Interesting Cast (Issue 57)
So you want to write a dank ass series with loads of characters that everyone loves, but you keep running into a single problem:

All of your characters are boring.

It can be difficult to plan out development for multiple characters, especially characters that don't get much screentime, but if even your main characters are boring, you might have a problem.

The biggest problem I see when it comes to people trying to create casts is that they aren't really creating characters so much as they're creating character ideas. Let's face it, you can have the best idea for a character in the world, but if you don't flesh it out into a full character in and of itself, well... The less said about that the better.

The ultimate worth of a character comes less from what happens to them or even what they are so much as it comes from who they are. Any character can have things happen to them, and any character can be something cool, but what really defines them is how they behave in relation to the aforementioned factors.

Note that for their behavior to feel realistic, your characters should act as their own agents and not just plot devices. You can give a character arbitrary traits and follow a paint-by-number scheme of how they go through a scenario given those traits, but if the personality of the character doesn't feel genuine, then it just feels like you're putting your writing on autopilot.

I feel like I'm not getting this across very well, so let's use a practical example here from a series I have an unhealthy focus on for no discernible reason, Mig X.

Mig X, like the majority of series on the wiki, has a lot of problems with characters feeling unrealistic and fleshed out (no offense Mig), but unlike the majority of series, it has one big saving grace: Terox.

Terox is an absolute joy to read. He's simultaneously a horrifying villain and an amazing little shit, and what makes him stand out so much from everything else is that he feels free. Terox doesn't feel constrained by the plot; Terox is the plot. He sets everything in motion by being himself, whereas a lot of other characters in the series just seem to act based on what would make the story seem "cool".

Of course, the main thing to nail down above all that is to make a character relatable. A stock badass with a stock tragic backstory and stock behavioral issues isn't relatable; it just feels forced. Try to imagine yourself in a character's shoes while you're writing them and think about how you would react in their situation.

Even if your personalities are wildly different, just roleplay for a minute and think, for example, "If I was a badass hero, what would I say?" instead of "If this plank of wood character was a badass hero, what would they say?". You're almost guaranteed to get better results.

Once you gain more experience writing a character and nail down their personality, you should be able to start asking "what would [character] do?" directly, but depending on the specific character, this could take a while.

I've tried to sum up what I could here, but as this is (obviously) a very complex topic, I would recommend reading this TVTropes page on the subject as well, assuming you have the time. It goes more in-depth on an individual basis I couldn't cover here without making this issue extremely long.

Lesson 13: Chekhov's Gun (Issue 58)
Let's say you're watching a movie, and fairly early into the film, it pauses for a moment to focus on a cowboy flicking his nose in the background. You momentarily wonder what that was about but shrug it off as a shot that went on for too long or something.

When the third act arrives and all hope seems lost, the background character suddenly bursts into the scene, taking off his face-obscuring cowboy hat to reveal himself as Bruce Lee, who promptly kicks the villain's asses. You think this is a clear Deus Ex Machina for a moment, then remember that, oh yeah, the film built this up a little. So what is it, exactly?

What you have just borne witness to is known as a (admittedly not amazingly executed) Chekhov's Gun.

The origin of the phrase "Chekhov's Gun" comes from short story writer Anton Chekhov, who is famously quoted as saying "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

While the original quote is more of a reference to Conservation of Detail, the term "Chekhov's Gun" has come to mean a seemingly insignificant plot element that plays a role in the story some time after it gets introduced. Done well, this can feel like satisfying payoff; done poorly, it can feel like either a borderline asspull or just lazy writing depending on how you screw it up.

A good Chekhov's Gun is introduced into the story fairly early on, isn't played up as having any sort of wider significance beyond its purpose in its own scene, but is still memorable enough for the audience to say "oh hey I remember that thing!".

A bad Chekov's Gun is usually done in one of two ways: either the introductory scene is too subtle, making it almost impossible for the audience to realize the element was actually introduced, or it's too blatant, practically yelling at the audience that "THIS THING WILL BE IMPORTANT LATER".

There are variations to the Chekhov's Gun, such as the Red Herring, which is a plot element specifically created to distract the audience from the real Chekhov's Gun, or the Brick Joke, which is essentially the Chekhov's Gun played for laughs. These variations can be screwed up in the same way as a normal Chekhov's Gun, so make sure to be just as careful while writing them.

Lesson 14: How to Write "Filler" (Issue 59)
Let's face it, we've all been here. We're watching a really good TV show, the plot has been progressing at a steady pace, and the season finale has given you a whole lot of questions. You put on the next season, and...wait, why are they hanging out at the beach? Didn't the world just end? Why are they talking about hot dogs? There is literally a major villain that landed half a mile away from their house in the season finale!

You, my friend, have fallen victim to the dreaded eternal time waster known as "Filler".



Some shows have it worse than others.

Filler is material that basically just takes a break from the main plot. If done well, it can be a welcome reprieve from the heaviness of the plot and give us more of an insight into the characters we're spending time with. If done poorly and/or so much it outweighs the actual plot, it becomes a massive pain in the ass.

So, how do you do Filler correctly? Ideally speaking, it should be done in a way that people can debate if it's even filler at all. By taking time to show your characters living their lives away from the main plot, you should be taking the opportunity to develop them and make them more interesting to the audience. If you just have filler for filler's sake and don't develop the characters at all, you might as well just be giving us the main plot anyways.

Another massive pitfall for Filler is poor timing; if your Filler is taking away focus from an especially tense part of the main plot, you're just going to end up frustrating your audience.

In a professional setting, making Filler work all the time can be somewhat difficult if you have a quota to fill (see: the anime industry), but if you aren't constricted by deadlines and executive meddling, you should do everything in your power to make each of your installments feel like they were worth something.

Think about your "filler" like this: if you took it out of your series, would it be exactly the same, or would it be missing some level of genuine character? If your answer is the latter, you're on the right track.

Lesson 15: Killing Off Characters (Issue 60)
Oh boy get ready for "CaT's Controversial Opinions" time even though these aren't really opinions so much as blatant writing facts that people like ignoring for the sake of being edgy sons of-

Okay, back on topic.

So, killing off characters. Let's face it, we've all had some of our favorite characters die on us at one point or another, and it usually brings forth a certain question to mind: was this a good idea?

Now, killing off characters the audience cares about is admittedly somewhat uncommon for various reasons, the most common being "Plot Armor" that keeps the character safe simply because they're needed to complete the story. That's not necessarily a bad thing on its own, but its overuse and cliche nature has lead to a contrarian movement of people who think that, if killing off no characters is bad, then killing off all your characters must be good!

I'm here to point out that no, killing everyone with contrived plot points is just as dumb and lazy as keeping everyone alive with contrived plot points. Being unique doesn't make it quality.

The main thing to remember when writing your characters at any time, but especially when you're considering axing them off, is that characters are narrative tools, and should be treated as such in a practical sense. If you still need a tool for a specific job, then you should keep that tool around, but if your tool has no purpose in your project other than taking up space, it should be removed from your inventory.

Now, removing a character from your inventory doesn't always mean killing them off; it may just mean putting them to the side for now and bringing them back later if you decide you need them. You don't need to keep tabs on all your characters all the time, so this course of action isn't really a stretch. A character should only out and out die if it serves the story.

Death is an extremely impactful event, both in real life and in fiction; you should never just kill off anyone more important than a background character and act like nothing is going to change because of it. Something should always come of killing off a character if you want it to be seen as more than just Edgy Snowflake signaling. Whether it be the development of another character, the progression of the story, or even just a contribution to the themes of the narrative, you should always have a reason for someone to die other than "I was told this would make my story edgy and mature".

All in all, just use common sense. Death being an easy way to make your story dark does not make it exempt from normal rules about telling a competent story.

Lesson 16: Writing an Interesting Main Character (Issue 62)
In Lesson 12, we discussed how to make interesting side characters. This could be considered a sort of continuation of that lesson, and more or less everything I said there still applies here. Again, make sure to check out this TVTropes page on the subject if you get the time, as it's an immensely informative resource.

So, main characters. They're the people who your story is going to focus on the majority of the time, so logic says you better make damn sure they're interesting (or at least bearable); unfortunately, as you can see in pretty much all media, having an uninteresting main character is more or less the status quo for escapist fiction, and I'd like to cover why that is and how you can avoid it.

The primary reason main characters in escapist fiction are so generic and bland is because the genre is just that; escapist fiction. A book with a main character people can latch onto and imagine themselves in place of is the easiest way to grab a reader's attention and keep them reading. This isn't necessarily a terrible idea in and of itself, but it's extremely uninspired and overplayed, and anyone with any literary experience beyond entry-level bare minimum is going to get tired of this trope very, very quickly.

You can get someone to read a book using a bland main character, but to get someone to experience a book, you need to go above and beyond the bare minimum and make your character human.

Let's face it, humans are humans and we like other humans; a bland main character is a handy dandy writing tool, but nothing more beyond that, and eventually your audience is going to want to spend as much time with them as they would want to spend with a socket wrench (and hell, at least the socket wrench is practical). If you want your audience to get really invested, you're going to need more than a paint-by-numbers stereotype of what a person should be; you're going to need character.

Character is sort of an interesting thing in that it's basically the concentrated version of what makes something feel human. Write about a normal rock and you're just writing what might as well be a technical essay; write about a rock with character and suddenly you're storyboarding for Steven Universe. If you want to upgrade your cardboard cutout to the status of "good", you're going to need to sprinkle some magic character dust on it, and while it's not super easy to do so, it's not exactly as hard as you might think.

To start off with, think about what makes you...you! Who is, really? If that's a bit too philosophical for your tastes, just ask yourself some basic questions such as "What do I like? What do I dislike? Why the hell do I put up with this purple assweed spamming my Message Wall every week?"

Once you have that line of thinking down, try applying it to your character. What do they like? What do they dislike? What is their motivation for doing what they do? How would they react in a certain situation? How does the way they handle the situation differ from anyone else's? Ask questions about your character as if they were a real person, because ideally speaking, they should feel like a real person.

This is a bit of unorthodox advice, but I would actually recommend taking this personality test if you're having trouble figuring out this line of thinking by yourself. It asks questions that force you to think about the kind of person you are. If you find you're still having trouble pinning down you characters, try extending the "roleplaying" advice i gave in Lesson 12 and taking the quiz again, but this time answering as if you were the character you're trying to figure out. The only real downside to this quiz is that it is fairly time-consuming, so learning to do this on your own is eventually going to do you better in the long run.

Like I said in Lesson 12, characters are an extremely complicated topic (about as complicated as real people, as a matter of fact), so I can't cover anywhere near everything here. Make sure to check out the resources I've linked if you get the time.