Signature Description

I’ve been thinking about signature descriptions a bit lately, so here are my thoughts on them. The first time I thought about them was when I watched this video about how Rowling wrote Harry Potter as a series of mysteries. The important part for signature descriptions starts around the 5:20 timestamp. Then, when I wrote my Brother Bones review, I put down Bones’ signature description (slouch hat, black coat, white skull mask), which is widely used in the stories to announce his arrival (since things are rarely described from his point of view).

Signature descriptions, be they looks, tools, specific expressions, or other things about a character, can be very useful in writing, because they make the character easily recognizable. While that might be of little importance if you only write one story about a character, it’s very useful in a series, because the audience grows used to the descriptions and can thus unconsciously recognize important characters (not just the main lead, but also recurring characters) merely by their description.

If you check the video above, you’ll find a short quiz where three short descriptions of side characters where put down for you to guess them - I got two of them right and would have made the third with, perhaps, two more seconds of thinking before the solutions were shown. None of the descriptions, of course, includes a name. They’re not even including the gender. But since Rowling keeps descriptions of her characters to a few easily memorable things, you still automatically recognize them.

Physical traits and looks are part of the characters you write. And you need to put them down somewhere, so the readers have an idea about who those characters are. When I started to write the Knight Agency series, I pretty early on figured out the clothing preferences and overall looks for Jane and Steven.

Jane is slightly below average height, has an athletic build, pale-blond hair in a pixie cut, and vividly blue eyes. The short hair is due to her taste as well as a security measure - long hair is easier to grab in a fight and being pulled around by your hair really, really hurts. The athletic build is due to her keeping in shape for her job as an agent. The other things, hair and eye colour and height, are genetic.

Steven is tall and has a strong frame, his hair colour is mostly unknown, because he shaves his head daily (but Secret Keeper has a scene suggesting it’s dark brown or black), and his eyes are dark. Despite his age (he’s 68), Steven still keeps in shape and is dangerous to cross. The shaved head isn’t only a logical next step from Jane’s short hair (a woman usually won’t get away with a shaved head, though), but also a way to disguise his age, because it won’t show his hair turning grey (or falling out completely). Again, height, eye colour, and hair colour are genetic.

The clothing preferences actually developed quickly, too. Jane likes relaxed clothing she can easily move in, so I gave her a signature outfit of sneakers, hoodie, and cargo pants - easy to move it, a lot of pockets to put stuff in, easy to hide in a crowd with. Steven, on the other hand, always wears a suit - usually a three-piece suit and always a bespoke one from Bradshaw and Son (they are introduced in Key Pieces). He can wear his surroundings like his skin, so he can blend in whenever he desires.

While their signature looks are very different, their characters are not. Jane and Steven are pretty alike in abilities and basic traits, which is why they make such a good team. I liked their juxtapose clothing preferences, too, because it is something they can banter about every now and then.

Signatures for Inez and Tom, the main characters of the Magpies series (first novel to be released later this year), are a little different. Inez’ signature so far is her rainbow-coloured hair, Tom’s is his stiff right knee. But signature descriptions can also evolve a little over time, as long as they are kept consistent.

Superheroes have a signature look, even if it changes now and then with changes in fashion or technology. They usually have signature colours (like Superman’s blue, red, and yellow), often signature symbols (like Batman’s bat symbol), and some also have signature tools or weapons (like Thor’s hammer). The colour scheme for the outfit often also comes back in the design of any accessories the hero uses. How strong the signature look is depends a lot on the hero as a such. The more ‘low-key’ the hero, the less obvious the look normally.

Beside visual signatures, there also are others. Audible signatures often are catchphrases (like Bart Simpson’s ‘eat my shorts’) or very specific ways of talking. Accents or dialects play in this direction, especially if they come with specific words or expression. The Death of the Discworld speaks like this, which makes him recognizable on page and translates well into an echo effect when sound really comes into play (in movies or audio books). A very unique voice can also serve as a signature, but is harder to present on page than in a medium with sound.

Another signature might be smell, but it’s not used as often, because smell isn’t as high on the list of described input as visual and audible clues. Yet, a specific perfume might play a role, especially in a mystery story, where it might betray the whereabouts of a character (in places with little air circulation, smells might linger for quite a while). If a viewpoint character is a werewolf or another being with a heightened sense of smell, smells will definitely play a larger role in the narrative and thus can become part of a signature description more easily.

Usually, signature descriptions are limited to the senses. Looks, sounds, and smells mostly, because tastes or tactile information are not something you work with in a regular scene. The viewpoint character needs to be very close to someone else to get a taste or a feel. In addition to specific looks, specific phrases or a very unique voice can serve as a signature. The same goes for a specific smell, since smell carries further than taste and can linger under the right circumstances.

For the signature description to be effective, it’s important to keep to the same or similar words for your description. Like this, the description is etched into the reader’s memory and at some point, they will automatically identify the character by the description. Try to keep it simple, too. Not too many words, not too many specifics. Just a few words which will be ingrained in the readers’ minds and allow them to identify the character later on.

You can, by the way, also use signature descriptions for places or objects, but that’s not done as often. Behaviour can also be a signature, but you should be more careful with that and not have your main character always biting their lip or scratching their head or giggling at the wrong time. That usually gets old rather quickly.

So, signature descriptions. A good way to keep the main cast of a story in the readers’ minds. Keep them simple, don’t overdo them, make them logical (in combination with a character’s character). Then they’re a great tool for every writer, but especially for someone who plans on a very long story or several with the same set of people.

Brother Bones Review

 

I’ve reviewed several Airship 27 series already (see here, here, and here). This time, though, the series is not one from the golden age of pulp, but a new one: “Brother Bones,” The Undead Avenger.

As the ‘undead’ part of the title suggests, Brother Bones is indeed a horror title, the main character being a zombie. It’s also a title mainly written by one author, Ron Frontier himself (he owns Airship 27). Merely the second book and only full novel, “Six Days of the Dragon,” was not written by him. The other three books are filled with his stories. Because of this, the stories show a progression of the main characters, which include, in addition to Brother Bones, formerly Tommy Bonello, about half a dozen other characters, from his at first unwilling helper Bobby Crandall over Bobby’s love interest Paula Wozcheski to Lieutenant Detective Dan Rains and reporter Sally Paige. On the other side of the law, there’s people like Harry Beest and Alexis Wyld, who turn up every now and then, as does the mad Doctor Bugosi, at least until his demise in the fourth book.

As a matter of fact, the reader spends little time in Brother Bones’ head. Bones is undead, has come back from the limbo between heaven and hell for a chance to clean his soul of the many, many sins he committed in life. When he’s not out dealing out revenge and justice for the innocent dead, he is sitting in a chair in a dark bedroom and simply waiting for the next assignment. The other characters of the stories are much more interesting, because they still do have a life. Yet, it is Brother Bones who brings them together and who often brings about the conclusion of the story.

The first story of the first book, “The Bone Brothers,” tells the origin story of the Undead Avenger. Once he was one half of the most deadly, ruthless, and brutal pair of killers in the employ of Topper Wyld, one of the two major crime bosses of the fictional northwest harbour city of Cape Noir. Jack and Tommy Bonello were twins, looking so much like each other that it took the tattoos on their right hands to know one from the other. They had no conscience and enjoyed wreaking havoc and ending lives. Until, one night, one of their victims thanked Tommy for her death. He couldn’t forget the girl’s voice, saw her in his dreams every night, almost went mad with it. He disappeared and joined a monastery. His calm second life lasted for a few months, until his brother found him and killed not only Tommy, but also the other monks, before setting the monastery on fire. Tommy found himself in a limbo between heaven and hell and stayed there for a while, until the girl turned up as his spiritual guide and gave him a choice: return to the world of the living to make up for his sins or go straight to hell. Tommy chose atonement and was sent back. He materialized as a ghost in a warehouse, where his brother had just burned the second big boss of the city alive, ended Jack’s life, and took over his dead body. He forced the second victim of the night, Blackjack Bobby Crandall, the recently deceased boss’ driver, into his service, and had him drive them to the burned-down monastery, where he found a face mask looking like a skull (made by one of the other monks before their deaths) and took it for his work.

Brother Bones’ signature look are his skull mask, which hides his decaying face, a wide-brimmed Fedora, a more and more tattered black coat, and two silver-plated .45 automatic pistols, which he dual-wields like no living being ever could. Bones knows no fear and feels no pain, which makes him a frightening foe to fight. He is almost indestructible and can return to his body even after another ‘death’ after twenty-four hours (as demonstrated in “The Synthetic Man”). Only magic can truly endanger him.

Yet, he doesn’t choose his targets himself, they are chosen for him by the powers that be. And while he’s not worried about killing more crooks, if they are between him and his target, he will not kill or endanger the innocent.

Paula Wozcheski, however, might be the character which changes most throughout the stories. In “The Scales of Terror,” she is introduced as the wife of a harbour worker who works in the same casino as Bobby and thinks her husband is cheating on her. She finds out it’s much worse and only comes out alive due to Brother Bones’ intervention. Afterwards, now widowed, she gets closer and closer to Bobby, until they become an on-off couple. Then, in “The Bruiser from Bavaria,” she is turned into a vampire, but Bones doesn’t go after her. He gives her one rule, though: not to kill the innocent, but still her hunger on the criminals of Cape Noir, which are plentiful. Paula adheres to that rule and, over time, takes on the identity of ‘Sister Blood,’ turning herself into the guardian of the women of Cape Noir and going for men who mistreat them (justifying her identity as Sister Blood with ‘you started that’ when Bones asks her about it). More than once, she fights by Bones’ side and, after initially trying to push him away, she stays in a relationship with Bobby, who doesn’t mind a vampire for a girlfriend (although, to be fair, he’s been sharing his flat with a zombie for about three years already).

The change which the characters show is a nice difference to Airship 27’s other publications which, due to their many authors, leave the characters more or less untouched by any events which unfold. Because there’s (almost) only one author writing the stories, Brother Bones and the others are allowed to grow.

Another nice touch are the female main characters of the story. Neither Sally, nor Paula, nor Alexis are likely to be easily threatened. Paula gets damselled twice: once in “The Scales of Terror” and once in “The Bruiser from Bavaria,” but comes out stronger after both encounters (a lot stronger after the second one, since she is turned into a vampire). Sally holds herself rather well, even in dangerous situations, and Alexis is no less cold-blooded or ruthless than her father, as she proves several times throughout the stories, too.

The stories themselves are what you might expect from a horror pulp about a zombie avenger. There’s the classic horror creatures such as werewolves (“Shield & Claw”), vampires (“The Bruiser from Bavaria”), zombies (“See Spot Kill”), Lovecraftian horrors (“The Scales of Terror”), man-made monsters (“The Synthetic Man” or “The Plastic Army”), human monsters (“The Butcher’s Festival”) and much more.

The only negative aspect of the stories is the editing, I’m afraid. I’ve not read the stories with my editor’s eye on, but easily spotted many errors which should have been found and corrected before the stories were released. While it’s easy enough to ignore them, because the stories are interesting to read and well-written on the whole, it’s something which a professional publishing house should have been able to catch. I do catch most errors, even while I’m just doing my own editing, yet if I could employ another editor for a second pair of eyes, I certainly would do so.

Editing notwithstanding, I can only recommend the series. The stories are well-written, the quality is good to excellent, the characters are engaging and allowed to grow, and the setting is one to quickly get comfortable in. A trip to Cape Noir can be a lot of fun, even with the black-clad avenger who calls himself “Brother Bones.”

About Mystery

After watching this video by Just Write today, I have been thinking back to the post about the 20 Rules I wrote ages ago for this blog and decided a few more words on the topic of mystery stories might be in order.

But before we dive into the mystery story, a few basics should be cleared up.

I’m referring to the mystery story as a story where a mystery needs to be solved. It’s not necessarily a crime story (although all crime stories are mystery stories at heart).

There must be someone who sets out to solve the mystery. I will call this person the detective, even if they’re not one by profession and don’t consider themselves one.

And I will refer to the person consuming the story as the reader, even though mystery stories can be found in almost all forms of media.

With that out of the way, on to the thoughts. The first rule S.S. van Dine put out was that the mystery must be fair. The reader must have the same chance to solve the mystery as the detective. This means all clues must be in the story. It doesn’t mean they need to have a little neon sign close to them or have to wave a red flag at the reader. They are supposed to be hidden and not in plain view. They are supposed to be disguised by means as discussed in the Just Write video:

• Occasionally Vague: subtle hints are dropped, often by the absence of something. Instead of outright saying ‘this is important,’ the reader gets to realize that this is missing and should be there. Or the clue is a reference to something, a quick remark upon the victim’s past, for instance.
• Mute Culprits: the culprit stays in the background by not talking much. They’re usually seen around - they need to be visible for the reader -, but they are just that, they’re around. They might turn up under suspicious circumstances, they might mope or show other signs of discomfort or anger, but they will not voice them.
• Buried Clues: the clues appear, but the reader’s attention is directed elsewhere. Clues are mentioned in lists of things which are there or in half-sentences where the other half of the sentence seems more important.
• Signature Descriptions: a specific person or object is always described with the same words, so the reader knows it’s meant, even if no direct name is involved. Like this, specific objects or characters are firmly rooted in the reader’s mind - and those are normally important for the story and, in a mystery, for the solution.

The 20 Rules do not list those devices, they’re more concerned with what is allowed and what is not. Some of the views are outdated by now, such as ‘no romance’ or ‘servants shouldn’t turn out to be the culprit.’ But the basics are still there. A mystery story must be fair. A mystery story needs a detective. The culprit must play a major role. The mystery must be solvable by scientific means (so no supernatural or invented means). The mystery must not be solved by accident or coincidence. There must be a murder (read: high stakes) and the mystery can’t turn out to be an accident of sorts (or suicide, in case of a dead body).

What else is there to say? Well, quite a bit.

Mystery stories are meant to challenge the reader, to make them try to solve the mystery just as well as the detective. Hence the rule of fairness. All clues must be out there to see, if you look closely enough. If you look back at the story or reread it after you know the solution, you must be able to find all the clues, even if you didn’t see them all the first time.

And there must be a detective who pits their mind against the culprit. The reader, essentially, works against both, the culprit and the detective. Whether the culprit is caught, is not important - that is very much down to taste. In some cases, the culprit might escape, because they’re faster, because they’re influential, or because they have some form of immunity (think of diplomats or royalty). But there always must be a detective who uncovers the mystery. The usual ‘and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those…’ rant is not mandatory, either, but can be a nice touch.

While a mastermind who pulls the strings behind the curtains is interesting, a culprit in a mystery must be visible. They must be around, they must be introduced to the reader. Of course, they shouldn’t come in twirling their moustache and billowing their black cloak, that would be far too obvious. But they should be around, the reader should be as aware of them as they are of the others. Having a group of suspects doesn’t only challenge the detective, it also gives the culprit a place to hide in plain sight.

The mystery itself must be based on scientific means. There must not be magic involved or a poison never seen or heard of before. The detective and the reader must be able to put the case together from what they can see, hear, feel, smell, or otherwise detect. That is why murder methods like stabbing, shooting, or strangling are still common in mystery stories - they are easy to detect.

And the mystery must be solved through detecting. The culprit is not allowed to suddenly come clean, because their nerves are giving. The culprit can’t be unveiled through a coincidence or an accident. Cheating isn’t allowed (such as holding a false séance to draw the culprit out), the detective (and the reader) must solve the mystery through honest work.

What do all of these things tell us about mysteries? They are hard to write, especially if, like me, you’re a discovery writer. I usually write as the story develops in my head. It’s very hard to write a suitable mystery like this. If you prefer planning everything first, writing mysteries is much easier, I imagine. Of course, you can also do an outrageous amount of editing to get everything straight afterwards, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to do that.

Yet, my John Stanton stories (first volume to be published in May) include mysteries. John is an investigator first and foremost, going in and looking for clues where others can’t (or where he already happens to be). And I have to admit I know who did it from the beginning in those stories, so I don’t have it too hard to write them.

On the other hand, they’re novellas, not novels, and much shorter. When John is bringing down a modern Bluebeard, chasing a socialite who is pretty alive for being dead, and hunting for a fish which has long been extinct, he is applying the methods of a detective. He is diving into mysteries, but the stories are no full-fledged crime stories as a such.

I was aiming for a bit of pulp much more than for a true crime or mystery story with them. Although, crime and pulp are not juxtapose to each other. John, a nobleman himself, is working with a former professional killer in a Steampunk environment. For me, that sounds like a nice pulp setting. He’s facing people who have plotted their crimes well and have their own motives for what they do. And he’s maintaining the harmless face of the young, bookish fifth son in public, too.

Mystery stories are fun to read and might be fun to write, if you like to plan them out first. If you want to try it, keep the techniques and the rules in mind, then you should end up with something truly interesting.

Sequels, Prequels, and Whatever

You can bet that if anything sells well, be it a movie, a novel, or another kind of storytelling, someone will sooner or later try to cash in on it again. They’ll try to make a sequel or turn it into a series. I’m a little guilty of that myself, but I realized there was going to be more than one story about Jane or Inez or John while I was still in the early stages, so I set them up to work as characters for a series from the get-go. There was no ‘sold well, let’s make another’ involved.

There is a definite difference between writing a series from the beginning (or from early stages, when you can still go back and change things) and coming back later to work with the same material again. There’s also different ways to do that.

Sequels are an obvious way. You just take all the characters people loved and put them through another adventure. But sequels are difficult - much more difficult than most people think. Only few of them really work and most do by avoiding the most obvious way of creating a sequel: telling the same story again. Two good examples for sequels which did it right are “Kung Fu Panda 2” and “Despicable Me 2.” None of them told the same story again.

“Kung Fu Panda 2” switched from ‘lovable, but absolutely unfit main character becoming a Kung Fu master’ to ‘lovable and surprisingly agile panda learning about where he came from.’ They had an ideal pairing for the hero and the villain (as did the first one), they raised the ante well (from merely ‘former student coming back to claim what he thinks is his’ to ‘a threat for all of Kung Fu and all of China’), and they balanced out the fun, the drama, the background, and the actual happenings very well. The fact that the first movie already established that Po was an orphan (since the goose who raised him definitely isn’t his biological father) worked in favour of the second movie.

“Despicable Me 2” didn’t try to do the same story again, either. It told what happened after the end of the first movie. Gru has adopted his girls and he’s trying to go legal, but is still struggling. As a former villain of renown, he is drafted by the anti-villain league to help with a worrying crime clearly committed by an experienced villain. The movie added another layer by having Gru fall in love - which went well with the girls, especially the youngest one, missing a mother. “Despicable Me 3” also did its work well, but I’ve already written a post about that.

What did both do well? They didn’t try to rehash the story of the first movie. That is the main problem with sequels - they’re often doing the same thing over and over again. And that is why they fail. That is why they are not as successful as the original. So if you decide to write a sequel with the characters you used before, make sure it’s a new story which could happen to them.

Prequels (here an old post from my other blog) are less obvious as a choice, but often necessary, when important or popular characters die in the story you want to do cash in on again. In a prequel, everyone is still alive. That’s the good side. The bad side - at least for the kind of story where half of the characters don’t get to see the end of it - is that you can’t kill any of the characters who need to be alive in the original story. In addition, the ending is already determined from the beginning.

Star Wars did a spectacularly bad job of making the prequels - but I already wrote a longish post about how to do it better in my other blog - while doing an amazing job with a prequel series in the original extended universe. “Knights of the Old Republic” (KOTOR for shorter) includes a series of comics and two RPGs for the computer (done wonderfully well by Bioware) and is set 4,000 years before the original trilogy, which means none of the characters you know from the movies makes an appearance (even Yoda is a good deal younger than that, after all). That gave KOTOR a huge freedom - and the stories found their way into the extended universe of Star Wars, when a villain from the KOTOR series was use (in spirit form) in a trilogy and another story set after the original movies (I refer to the Jedi Academy Trilogy and the novel “I, Jedi”).

Extended universes allow for a lot of additional material, by the way. Instead of only making direct sequels or prequels, you can put new characters into the setting, expand side characters in their own stories, and flesh out the universe you created even more. Some series work on the extended universe principle (Discworld, for instance, has several main characters and also stories build around characters turning up only once or twice), others do not.

If more than one person works on a series, extended universe or not, then you will need some kind of reference. Pre-Disney Star Wars did that by insisting all novels (from the Thrawn Trilogy onwards, that is) should run along the same main timeline. Discontinuity could be explained by what the characters knew or thought they knew, as long as it wasn’t too severe.

Other stories (such as the new pulps by Airship 27, which are based around the main characters) keep a ‘bible’ which includes the main points about characters and worlds, so every writer knows what is set in stone and needs to be obeyed (since it would be very bad, if one made the Black Bat drop his ‘I’m blind’ act in public, for example) and what can be toyed with. There will always be discontinuity in a series written by more than one person, but both an extended universe and a character-based series can be shared, if people are a bit careful with the base material.

Sometimes, TV series get turned into movies (as with “Firefly” or “X Files”). Sometimes, movies get turned into a TV series (as with “Buffy” or “The Librarians”). In both cases, there might be problems.

Closing off a series which ended too soon, like “Firefly,” with a movie might be a very good idea. You can finish the story and give the audience closure. Or you can overdo it, of course, and end up with an ending which nobody wants - making the audience wish they could just go and ignore the movie (which they can on a personal level, of course). On the other hand, movies usually have a higher budget, so you can invest in a bigger story.

Movies which later on spark a TV series often come with a different set of problems, though. In most cases, the same cast won’t be available for the TV series. In most cases, you have much less budget and have to find a good reason to move everything somewhere else. In most cases, you need to severely expand the basics to keep a series running for a season or more. “The Librarians” did that extremely well, by the way. The movies came first, showing us one librarian and his daily work for the Library. When the series rolled around, they expanded the universe (see above), and introduced three ‘junior librarians’ who were brought in to learn the ropes (since librarians don’t grow old on the job) and their handler (see the ‘don’t grown old’ part). Then they destroyed the Library, making the librarians go to a branch office with a highly-experienced administrator. Since the main lead from the movies turns up every now and then in the episodes (often in the season finales), there is continuity. At the same time, the focus now is on the five new main characters (three librarians, one handler, one experienced administrator).

As I said, most problems arise when people try to turn a single story created as a such into something longer, like a series, a sequel, or a prequel. If you plan a story out for several books (adding an over-reaching story arc) or plan your characters so you can use them for several stories, you will not face the same problems.

What you should keep in mind, if you want to expand on a story later, is if your characters and/or universe will hold up for more than the original concept. You will have to get down a new story (best would be something completely different, as the shift from the training of Po to the danger to Kung Fu in the first two “Kung Fu Panda” movies). You will have to open up the universe, show new sides of your characters. Optimally, they will grow and become better and stronger than they were before. You also have to decide whether you want some kind of timeline or whether you just want to tell new stories without stating when in the characters’ lives they are set.

Not all prequels are as horrible as the Star Wars ones. Not all sequels are inherently bad. But before you expand on an existing story, you should think about what you want to do and whether you’re trying ‘same old’ or something new. Even if the first story was highly successful, ‘same old’ rarely is a good choice.