An Interview With Ian Benke
Emotional Stakes: Characters have to be at risk and face challenges that will impact them forever. A quest is a gigantic undertaking that should change their perspective, challenge their beliefs, and ultimately change their lives. Stakes have to be high not just for the whole world threatened by a Dark Lord, but more importantly, for characters on a personal level.
Science Fiction and Fantasy are hugely popular genres. What does it take for a writer today, to write compelling and successful Science Fiction and Fantasy stories? Authority Magazine started a new series called “How To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories”. In this series we are talking to anyone who is a Science Fiction or Fantasy author, or an authority or expert on how to write compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy.
As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ben Costa & James Parks.
Ben Costa and James Parks are authors that have been friends since the second grade. In addition to Dungeoneer Adventures (Aladdin), they are the creators of the graphic novel series Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo (Random House) (for which Ben is also the artist), as well as the tabletop roleplaying game Land of Eem.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share a story about what first drew you to writing over other forms of storytelling?
Stories are a big part of our lives. Growing up we’d read stories, comics, watch movies, but also play tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons, which kind of kicked off this love of collaborative storytelling. It was this totally new activity, as if we were creating our own lore and legends every time we played. It was really inspiring. So from a young age we both loved writing, world building, and crafting characters. In fact, we used to make comics together in grade school, as well.
You are a successful author. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Stubbornness: We came up with our first graphic novel series, Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo, almost twenty years ago now. There were lots of stops and starts, and rejection letters from publishers. But because we loved the characters and story so much, we refused to let the project die, and finally got the series published by Random House in 2017. Even now we have new ideas and plans for Rickety Stitch!
Cockeyed Optimism: We get really excited about our stories because they’re the sorts of stories we’d like to read ourselves. We’re our own audience first, so we figure if we like it, maybe other folks will too. And we always seem to write these fantasy adventures that are probably way too ambitious, but we’re dead set on tying everything together in the fantasy world we’ve created.
Discipline: We’re pretty organized and we do the work. We set goals and schedules for ourselves and collaborate daily to not just bounce ideas off of each other, but to turn those ideas into a narrative. We’re big planners and outliners, nailing down just about every story beat before we write the full manuscript.
Can you tell us a bit about the interesting or exciting projects you are working on or wish to create? What are your goals for these projects?
Our new middle grade series, Dungeoneer Adventures, is launching in May and we couldn’t be more excited. It’s about a kid named Coop Cooperson and his three friends as they navigate being students at a special school for adventurers called Dungeoneer Academy.
We’re also designing a tabletop roleplaying game called Land of Eem, set in the world of our fantasy stories. It’s a massive undertaking with a huge sandbox setting and tons of new art. We’re launching a Kickstarter sometime next year with game publisher Exalted Funeral.
Wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Let’s begin with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. How do you define sci-fi or fantasy? How is it different from speculative fiction?
For many folks, fantasy is all about escapism, but for us there’s a little more to it than that. Fantasy is a literary playground where readers can not only embark on harrowing adventures and experience outlandish otherworldly settings, they can face struggles and explore comlex ideas from any number of creative angles. Fantasy worlds are kind of like sandboxes, in that we can jump in and play with all sorts of ideas, while simultaneously investing in characters who can be our guide.
Speculative fiction seems to be a term for more “literary” genre fiction. It’s like calling a comic a graphic novel, you know what I mean?
It seems that despite countless changes in media and communication technologies, novels and written fiction always survive, and as the rate of change increases with technology, written sci-fi becomes more popular. Why do you think that is?
Maybe because sci-fi is always pushing the envelope of the status quo. Technology and media will always change and new generations of writers are going to be on that bleeding edge of that change, getting inspired by new ideas that lead to new philosophical puzzles that no one had even considered before. And people want to make sense of the constant change through stories. That’s what science fiction does best — explore the problems and conflicts of our own world through the lens of another future or reality.
In your opinion, what are the benefits to reading sci-fi, and how do they compare to watching sci-fi on film and television?
Reading is great because it’s active whereas watching a movie is passive. We interpret a book but are shown a movie. When you read a book your brain fills in all the sensory details that make up people and places and things, but what’s really special about reading is that the story literally transfers ownership from the author’s mind to yours. Every interpretation is unique. Forget literary analysis and all that. The way any book lives in our heads is super intimate. Not sure who said it, but the moment a book leaves its author’s hands it belongs to everyone else in the world in a deeply personal way.
What authors and artists, dead or alive, inspired you to write?
Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, Robert E. Howard, Stan Sakai, Jeff Smith, Frank Herbert, Douglas Adams
If you could ask your favorite Science Fiction and Fantasy author a question, what would it be?
Mr. Tolkien, where do you get off being so good at worldbuilding? Just kidding! But, we’d love to know how he kept all of his stories and worldbuilding straight. We can barely do it between the two of us and we have the benefit of Google Docs.
We’d like to learn more about your writing. How would you describe yourself as an author? Can you please share a specific passage that you think exemplifies your style?
We both like lyrical language and humor. Putting our own twists on fantasy tropes. For example, here’s a short passage from our new middle grade series, Dungeoneer Adventures, Book 1: Lost in the Mushroom Maze.
“Dungeoneer Academy itself is located underground in a place called the Underlands. Which is basically exactly what it sounds like. A whole world beneath our feet where caves and tunnels all intertwine like a big maze. A place where giant underground cities carved out of rock bustle with all sorts of species of people going about their daily lives. It’s pretty cool.
To be perfectly honest, though, living underground as the only human at the school has been a bit of an adjustment. I’m used to fresh air, tall grass, and babbling rivers, but I guess if you replace fresh air with musty egg farts, tall grass with jagged rocks, and babbling rivers with burbling slime, it’s close enough. Besides, if you really want to be a dungeoneer, then Dungeoneer Academy is the place to be.”
Based on your own experience and success, what are the “Five Things You Need To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories?” If you can, please share a story or example for each.
- Great Characters: This is a big one. If you don’t have compelling characters, the story doesn’t have legs. More than any other aspect of a story, readers want to invest in characters that they can relate to, laugh with, or love to hate. We have to care about them.
- Convincing Worlds: World-building is tough to do right, and an easy rabbit hole to get lost in. But, some worlds are so real and fleshed out it pulls you in deep. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth or Frank Herbert’s political landscape of the year 10,191 are great examples of masterful worlds that feel utterly real.
- Emotional Stakes: Characters have to be at risk and face challenges that will impact them forever. A quest is a gigantic undertaking that should change their perspective, challenge their beliefs, and ultimately change their lives. Stakes have to be high not just for the whole world threatened by a Dark Lord, but more importantly, for characters on a personal level.
- Interesting Takes: It’s difficult to invent entirely new concepts, but that’s not really necessary to write a good story. As long as the author puts a new spin on an old concept and sparks the reader’s imagination in some way. Only you can write a story exactly the way you would write it, and that’s honestly what makes it worth reading.
- Rich Plotline: You don’t have to invent the most original plot in the world, but things generally do need to happen in fantasy fiction. What matters more than a twist ending or a convoluted series of events is a strong story structure that supports all of the previous points mentioned.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Entertainment, Business, VC funding, and Sports read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them 🙂
We’d love to have breakfast with Melissa Cobb at Netflix! She really knows animation and it would be so cool to pick her brain about the industry.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Check out LandofEem.com or follow us on Twitter @RicketyStitch
Thank you for these excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent. We wish you continued success.
Authors Ben Costa & James Parks On How To Write Compelling Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.