Character Diversity

There are good reasons to diversify your cast. One is, certainly, social justice. Others play more into the storytelling itself and are just as important. In general, there’s always a way of making your cast more diverse, too, even if the way as a such might differ, depending on your genre or general setting. Character diversity has many uses for you, so you should definitely dip into that.

The first useful point about having a diverse line-up of characters is that it opens new ways of solving the problems within the story. If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every repair job looks like it needs to be done with a hammer. If you have a toolbox, there are a lot of different tools at your disposal to do the repairs in different and, quite often, more efficient ways.
If you only have a group of fighters — even worse, all using the same weapon — there’s only one way a fight can go. If your fighters are good and have some luck, they’ll defeat all the enemies with their swords and move on. You’ll have to narrate sword strike after sword strike to show how they slowly decimate the enemy troops.
If you have a group of mixed fighters, some with mêlée and some with ranged weapons, the fight will be different already. Your ranged fighters will be able to hit the enemy before the mêlée fighters have to engage it. On the other hand, your mêlée fighters have to protect the ranged fighters from direct attacks (as ranged fighters are usually weak against that). More strategy becomes necessary. Your regular fighters might have to retreat from an easy fight to defend your archers instead. Suddenly, the position of fighters on the battlefield plays much more of a role.
Now imagine you add mages and rogues to that situation. Your mage will have to be defended at all times, but can do devastating damage among the enemy troops. Your rogue might sneak away and operate behind the enemy lines, taking out powerful enemies, such as their mages, but risking capture or death in the process.
That simple, repetitive fight scene from earlier has now become a scene where a lot is happening, where several different types of characters work together to win. You have a mage and some archers in the back, a rogue behind enemy lines, and your heavily-armoured sword fighters drawing the attack in the front to give their colleagues in the back the chance to work without worrying about being hit. Which fight do you think the reader will find more riveting? The ‘sword fighter against sword fighter’ one or the ‘one diversified army against another diversified army’ one? I know which one I’d like better.

Historical accuracy is also not an excuse for not having a diverse line-up for your story. It might be unrealistic to have person of colour in a group of Vikings (but not as unrealistic as you might think), but there’s still ways of making that group more diverse. Different weapons, as shown above, can already make a difference. So can the addition of different groups which have been present in Scandinavian society. You can have a woman or two (try to avoid tokenism by putting only one member of a group in your line-up, no single character can represent a whole group). You can have members on different levels of experience. You can have someone with a disability (which wouldn’t be unusual, as it were). Your group can still be very diverse without having people from all over the world.
As soon as you dip into fantasy, there’s even less of an excuse. You make the rules for your fantasy society and population, so there’s no ‘historical accuracy’ there at all. In a story set on our world, the excuse is valid to a degree, but not in a fantasy world only based on a historical era. Fantasy middle ages are not like real-world middle ages. As soon as you give me elves, dwarves, and orcs, you’ve lost the right to complain about female warriors or visitors from warmer climes with dark skin.

Some argue that there is no reason for them to include more diverse characters because it’s not necessary for the story. It works with a group of four straight, white, able-bodied men.
Instead of asking ‘why should I have a diverse cast,’ it sometimes helps to ask ‘why should I not have a diverse cast?’ What would your story lose if you didn’t have those four straight, white, able-bodied men? What if one was a woman? What if one was a person of colour? What if one was missing an arm? Would that make your story impossible to tell? Does your main character have to be a straight man? Could they be gay? Could they be a woman? Would changing this or that aspect about the character make the story impossible to write?
In a lot of cases, the answer to all of those questions would be ‘no, it wouldn’t make the story impossible to tell.’ Even in a romance novel, it’s not necessary to have a straight couple. It’s not necessary for both of them to be white. It’s not part of the story that they’d both be able-bodied. Whenever the answer is ‘no,’ you can replace characters with different ones and create a more diverse cast.
What you need to avoid, though, is creating stereotypes and token characters. No one character can represent a group completely. Stereotypes always fall short of being deep. Research is always necessary.

Once you look into diverse characters and research what would set them apart from your regular straight white dude (as I call him), you will see new possibilities. You will see that this new character would approach a problem from a different angle, would bring in a new view of it. You will see that the person who stands in your heroes’ way would react differently when approached by a person of colour or by a woman or by someone with a missing arm. You will see that gathering information from that person who knows all about the underworld will be easier for one of the new characters you made because they might share something with that person which your straight white dude does not.
Research is necessary, though, especially if you don’t belong to a group whose member or members you want to put into your story. If in doubt, ask someone. If in doubt, leave out aspects which you can’t describe well on account of not being part of that group. There’s no need, for instance, for you as a man to describe what it’s like to give birth or to be on your period. If you don’t have a birth in your story, there’s no need to talk about it. Your female character doesn’t have to be on her period, either, unless it’s important for the story (I can’t really imagine a story in which it would be, but there probably are some).

Aim for diversity in your cast. Break away from that long line of straight white dudes saving the world and put the world’s fate into the hands of the lesbian woman or the black guy. You might be surprised at how different and new it can make your story because it opens up pathways you’ve never seen before, much less taken. Diversity isn’t just a social aspect which should be reflected in writing, it is also a better and more interesting way of telling stories.

Review: Heavenly Official's Blessing

I’ve recently slipped into Chinese stories (the Boys’ Love stories by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu to be more precise) and “Heavenly Official’s Blessing” is my favourite out of her three series which are now officially released in English (there have  been fan translations before). I simply love Xie Lian, the main character, and the way the story unfolds during the two (of four) books I’ve read by now.

Once, Xie Lian was a prince. He did good deeds and proved himself worthy of ascension, so he was elevated to the status of a god (Chinese mythology comes with many gods, so it isn’t that impossible for a human to attain god status, provided they are good at what they do). Acting on his idealistic mindset, he broke the laws of heaven, specifically the one not to use his divine powers in favour of one group of regular humans — in his case his country. For this, he was banished from heaven, his powers blocked. He learned to survive in the world and was deemed worthy again, so he ascended once more — for about half an hour spent in battle up in heaven. This led to his second banishment. Recently, he has ascended again, but did a lot of property damage as he did. Now Xie Lian, the Scrap Immortal, has large debts to pay off, but not a single temple or shrine from which to ear merits, the heavenly currency.
I’m not summarizing the first book here, by the way. That is how the situation is after a short prologue which summarizes things for the reader. Xie Lian’s story doesn’t start with his ascension, it starts with him in debt.

Yet, Xie Lian has friends and so he gets the chance to work off some debts by following the cry for help from a local noble whose daughter has fallen prey to an entity which is dubbed ‘ghost groom’ and has been kidnapping brides for quite a long time already. Since Xie Lian has no powers (his are still bound by two curse collars on his body, so he cannot generate divine energy outside of heaven and thus has to be careful about using whatever he takes down with him), his friend Ling Wen (the up-most bureaucrat in heaven) tricks two young martial gods into helping him, which they do more or less willingly.
On this first mission, Xie Lian makes an important acquaintance — a strange man in red with silver accessories who turns into a cloud of silver butterflies when Xie Lian tries to attack him. This, he learns later on, is the most powerful ghost in the ghost realm, the only active of the Four Calamities who is worthy of the title ‘supreme’ (two of the others are no longer active and the last is ‘in name only’ as a calamity, he’s not really a supreme in power). The man in red is Hua Chang.
Hua Chang became notorious for challenging thirty-five gods after becoming a supreme ghost, thirty-three of whom rose to the challenge. He defeated them all and, after they didn’t descent from heaven as agreed to, burned all of their temples and shrines in one night to force them down from heaven. Yet, Xie Lian finds nothing horrible about that man whose face he didn’t see (on account of being disguised as a bride to lure out the ‘ghost groom’ and wearing an opaque veil).
Xie Lian then has a novel idea: if nobody else will built him a shrine and worship him, he’ll do it himself. This leads him to a peaceful village and makes him cross paths with San Lang, a young man from high in society who is travelling seemingly aimlessly and staying with him. San Lang, who dresses in red like the supreme ghost Hua Chang and knows too much about the past to be a regular human but doesn’t show any signs of a ghost pretending to be human (such as missing palm- or fingerprints).
This is not the ending of the first book, by the way, but rather somewhere before the midpoint.

I like Xie Lian’s outlook on his life. He’s learned humility during his eight-hundred years of banishment to the human realm, has become good at improvising and living off scraps (hence the moniker ‘the Scrap Immortal’). He doesn’t complain about his status as laughingstock, he doesn’t demand to be given something, least of all respect. He, the once powerful and immensely wealthy prince, is happy with the scraps he can find and accepts any kind of gifts with great humility and gratefulness. Xie Lian shows respect to all people around him (in later chapters showing him as a human, though, you see he was already going in that direction). He rarely uses a weapon — most of the time the silk band wrapped around his body which is a powerful divine object —, but is actually a swordsman second to none. He has simply chosen not to use a sword any longer after something he did in the past.
Hua Chang is another character who is easy to like. Yes, he’s an immensely powerful ghost even feared by the gods. On the other hand, he doesn’t appear to do horrid things, he doesn’t kill unprovoked (though he will, without hesitation, when he deems it necessary), and he rules the ghost realm well. He clearly is very much interested in Xie Lian (and might have been for a very long time, too) and wishes to be in his vicinity.
The two of them do make a nice couple, sharing both similarities and being different in other areas. Besides, what would be more interesting than a couple made up of a god (ascended for good deeds) and a ghost (descended for bad deeds)? No other couple of lovers can ever have been more star-crossed.

It also helps that the author is good at adding comedy to balance out scenes full of pathos and heavy feelings. There are scenes which are outright funny, scenes which are full of action, but also scenes filled with emotional depth. That’s one of the things which I love about her books. It’s easy, especially in stories which include such immensely powerful characters, to make everything seem grim and dark (and many authors would do so), but she breaks it up with lighter scenes to balance it all out.
I also like how her Boys’ Love stories are foregoing all the angst from the Japanese YAOI stories. In those, the whole ‘OMG, I’ve fallen in love with a guy, what will I do now?’ is a big part of the story. In the stories by this author I’ve read, it’s more sort of ‘that guy looks good, I wonder what happens when we go on an adventure together.’ It’s much more relaxed, the romance angle is there, but it is not played as a tragedy, it’s just part of the story. In some of her stories, like some scenes in “Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation”, it might lead to humour. In some of her stories, it leads to emotional scenes. It never leads to angst, though.

“Heavenly Official’s Blessing” by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu is available in an official translation now and it’s a lot of fun to read, so give it a look at least. You might also like the other two series by the same author — “Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation” (turned in to a life-action series under the title “The Untamed”) and “The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System” (which is as ludicrous at times as the title looks). I’ve certainly had a good time with all I’ve read so far.

Building Worlds

Why should you be building worlds? Well, because you will need to. As soon as you don’t set your story in the here and now, in the world we live in and the present time, you will need to do some world building. It’s a complex process, but it can be fun, especially if you like looking into history and geography. Both are important to understand why our world and our society are how they are.

No matter how fantastical your world is, it does have to adhere to rules, to laws of nature, and laws of physics. They might differ greatly from ours, allowing for dragons to fly or humans to wield magic, but they must be there. If someone does something specific, the outcome must always be similar at least, if not outright the same. As in the real world, where an object dropped will always fall down, the world you build must be reliable. Unless you’re Lewis Carroll and it’s the Wonderland, of course. In this case, nothing has to make sense. The whole point of the Wonderland is not to make sense, after all.
If your characters travel the same way two times (on horseback, on foot, by airship, whatever you have chosen), the way should take the same amount of time. They could shave off a few hours here or take a day longer there (provided the way is long enough) due to weather conditions or luck, but they can’t take twelve days for the way to the Fortress of Evil and half a day on their way back. That just won’t fly with the readers — and for good reason.
If mages in your setting use ingredients to do magic, they should need the same ingredients for the same spell each time. If they use words, the words must be the same. There have to be underlying rules to what happens, so the audience can understand how the world works and will understand future troubles happening — such as having to do a spell and being all out of ingredients for it. If you have shown that specific herbs are necessary for the healing spell and now the mage wants to heal the fighter, but they don’t have the right herbs, the problem is understood by the readers without long explanations.

In order to build the society in your world, you have to give your world some history. If you look at the map of the world today, you will see borders everywhere. Those haven’t just grown out of the ground, splitting up the surface. They were made throughout human history (and have been created, moved, and erased many times over). It is important to understand history in order to create a society, too. We’re all a product of past generations who have lived during different points in history, have held different beliefs, have chosen mates to have a family with through the lenses of different societies.
If you want a society to resemble that of a certain era in Earth’s history, read about that historical period, but also the ones directly before it. Understand how that society came to be, why certain things were done in a certain way, why certain beliefs were held. Take the historical reality and transpose it, make it fit your magical creatures or the mages who are replacing regular nobility in your setting. If you want to go Steampunk, read Steampunk stories. Read books about Steampunk to understand the underlying ideas and aesthetics. If you want to use Ancient Greece, read up on every aspect on it, from plain history over art to society and mythology. Understand how the society worked and why it had become the way it was.
That, of course, is easier if you like history in the first place and can’t wait to dive into that book on Ancient Greece or the Regency era or the Bronze Age. If in doubt, choose an era you’ve always been interested in, even if it has been done a lot before, unlike that other era you could choose, but aren’t really interested in.

You will always do a lot more world building than you can directly address in the story you’re writing. It’s important to remember that and accept it. You need to know a lot more about the world to make it tick than those who read the story will have to. Some things will become obvious in time. Some will be addressed by the story. Some things will simply be part of the set dressing. Much more, though, will remain only in your notes about the world and will never be known to the audience.
What you should avoid at all costs is to put all that knowledge in via exposition dumps. No matter how much more information you have on the society, history, or geology of your world, do not drop it in unless it is necessary. Add it when it becomes necessary or soon before that time. If you’re writing a series, don’t drop information for the end of book four in during the first chapter of book one. Put it somewhere in the middle of book four.

If you want to make things visible, for yourself or, via blog or map directly in the book, for your audience, use the right tools for it. There is software for creating maps, such as the very expensive CC3+ (thought there sometimes are good offers in Humble Bundles, that’s how I got it, too). Some writing software, like World Anvil, has tools for map-making or blueprint-creation as well.
Write down your information in an ordered way, create a bible of sorts for your world (‘bible’ here referring to a collection of information, not to the religious text). Create maps and blueprints for important places. Write down a time-line for the history of your world and for the back story of your characters. Make sure you have all the information at your fingertips at any point of your work. You need to have it all present, even if most of it might never be known to your readers.
If you want to show off all of your world building, do it outside of the actual story. Put up a website with all the information, write it down in a blog, or make a free e-book which covers it all. Your fans will love it while the average readers will only look at it if they want or need to.

Building worlds for your stories is necessary and it can be a lot of fun. It helps you to keep the worlds working and not to surprise your audience in a negative way by making continuity errors. It helps you with plotting that third book you weren’t sure you’d be writing and picking a new area of your world for it. It can actually be a very fun activity all by itself. Building a new world and shaping it the way you want to can be satisfying and give you new inspiration as well. So pick up pen and shovel and build yourself some worlds!

Work Update

Last Monday, “Theoretical Necromancy Vol. 2” was released, so it is time again to do an update on my current work and my planned projects.

I have plotted a lot of different projects the last couple of months and all of them will eventually get written — I hope. First of all, though, here is an update on my release schedule:

• May 2022: The Fourth Reich (standalone novel)
• August 2022: The Haunting of Winterthorne Hall (standalone novel)
• November 2022: The Necromancer’s Notebook (Isadora Goode Vol. 2, 3 novellas)
• February 2023: The Lady of the Dead (standalone short story collection)
• May 2023: DI Colin Rook Vol. 1 (short story collection)

Here are my current projects which are not yet written.

Novels:

• Murder at Siegfried’s Rest (standalone mystery)
• The Phantom (might be first in a series of thrillers)
• Killer Investigation (standalone mystery)
• Bred for Power (standalone superhero story)
• The Black Friar of Milton Manor (standalone mystery/thriller)
• The Templar’s Cross (standalone horror story)
• Manor Murder (standalone mystery, title may still change)
• The Curse of the Devil’s Voice (set in the Theoretical Necromancy world)
• Shadow and Sun (standalone cultivation story)
• Changing Plans (standalone superhero story)
• The Strange Case of the Scorned Spectre (might be first in a series of mysteries)
• Sword and Dagger (might be first in a series of fantasy police procedurals)

Novellas:

• The Mastermind Trilogy (3 heist-type stories)
• The Eye Vol. 2 (Vol. 2 of The Eye series)
• The Misadventures of Isadora Goode (Vol. 3 of the Isadora Goode series)
• John Stanton — Agent of the Crown Vol. 3 (Vol. 3 of the John Stanton series)

Short Story Collections:

• On An Adventure (standalone adventure stories)
• Vampire Hunt and Other Stories (set in the Theoretical Necromancy world)
• Hunters (standalone horror/pulp stories)
• The Crew (standalone horror/pulp stories)
• Fallen Angel (standalone horror/pulp stories)
• Scholomancer (standalone horror/pulp stories)
• Creatures United (standalone horror/pulp stories)

As you can see, there’s a lot of stuff to write. I will have to focus very much on my writing to make sure I get all of it done in time. There’s still three projects caught in plotting which might or might not happen and are, therefore, not added here. Everything that I have listed is plotted out and can be written as soon as I get to it. Everything listed for release is already written. The lists are not in any special order, just in the one in which they’re on my kaban board, which is completely random.
I usually can do a project in about one month if I really focus on it, so I could, theoretically do about ten a year (having about half the month during my four release months of the year), but I rarely get more than six or so done — real life has a way of intervening as in January and February this year.
My main problem in recent months was that I had ideas for new stories, researched and plotted them, and didn’t write as much as I should and could have done. Yet, I also need a break here and there, so I won’t really stop doing this. It re-fuels my imagination.
After reading a couple of cultivation novels (I have a review for one coming up), I wanted to try my hands at this, too, which is how “Shadow and Sun” came to be.
I wanted to do a homage to Hammer films and ended up with the plot to “Fallen Angel”.
I watched the old German Edgar Wallace movies and from them was motivated to plot “The Black Friar of Milton Manor” as my own take on the genre.
“The Phantom” has its roots in my love not so much for the Fantomas novels, but the three French Fantomas movies. I have taken some of the basics from there, but changed even more.

Such things happen. They make sense and they can lead to a lot of fun. They also lead to even more projects. I’m looking at several years of work, looking at the lists above. In the end, however, it will be worth it.