Category Archives: Writing Tips

Savvy Saturday – On Words and Thoughts

When you want to discover what you think about an idea, what do you? Do you write an essay? Do you call up a friend? Do you sit in a chair and ponder? As a novelist, I found it interesting to discover recently that writing plays a very different role in my thought processes than it does in the thought processes of some of my other friends. Understanding the role of writing in the mind of a given author can be helpful for readers and other writers alike, as different writers will use their writing for different purposes, and knowing how one thinks about writing – and how writing shapes one’s thoughts – can help one know how to best approach a project.

Until recently, I was only truly familiar with one way of writing and processing – mine. When I have a vague idea, I might jot down some thoughts about it on paper, but this tends to raise more questions for me than it answers. To really understand something, and to feel qualified to incorporate it into my writing, I tend to have to go talk to another real live human being. Depending on what the topic is – a plot point, an idea of character development, a world that I’m building, or an issue of culture, religion, or morality – I have different friends that I talk with. But I find that I don’t want to commit the time and effort to really writing something until I understand how I feel about an issue, and I don’t really understand my own thoughts and feelings until I talk about it with another person.

In contrast, other writers process their ideas themselves by writing. If they want to know what they think about something, they write an essay on the topic. They may not be as comfortable with talking out loud – they are more eloquent, complete in their thoughts, or coherent on paper, they believe, and so they prefer to interact intellectually with others via the written word.

These two styles of thought processes may lead to very different types of writing. I have always been comfortable sharing my written work, as it tends to be a coherent whole that reflects thoughts that I have previously engaged with, absorbed, and assimilated before beginning a writing project. However, I do not write until I know what I’m going to say, which can lead me to not want to write until I have thoroughly discussed a topic with my friends, my family, and my dog (if no one else is available). Others, who write to find out what they think, may find their work to be more exploratory and personal in nature. It may change over time in tone, theme, and even message, as they write to find out what it is that they believe or think about a topic. Writers of this sort may find that they need to rewrite their work more times before it is acceptable in their opinion to send out for others’ feedback, or that some drafts or pieces of writing never get shared at all, as their purpose is for personal edification rather than for distribution.

Neither style of writing is better than another, but knowing what your style is can help you write more effectively and achieve your goals. If you are the first type of writer, here are a few tips for making progress on a story:

  • Identify writing buddies who you can have serious writing conversations with – who will help you analyze plot and character holes and give you advice on exactly what magical powers the three-crested owl should have.
  • Once you know what it is you want to say, outline your work carefully so that every point you make works together and builds on the story you already know you want to tell.
  • Start writing! At some point, you have gathered enough information and talked with enough people that you do know what you think and what the right decisions will be for your story, so go write them! Procrastinating at this point will only put off creating the story that only you can tell.

If you are the second type of writer, however, here are a few tips:

  • Identify good editors who are willing to invest in your manuscript and tell you which parts are inconsistent, need work, or just don’t make sense.
  • Don’t worry about not making sense in your first draft. Just write.
  • Once you have written your first draft, go back and rewrite! You probably know far more clearly now what it is that your story is trying to say than you did at the beginning, so go back and tell the story that you now know is trying to be told.

Whichever of these methods speaks to you more, go forth and pursue it with passion. Have fun with your writing, and the end result will be a story that you can be proud to share.

Savvy Saturday – Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day!

You know what I’d like to read more of? Valentine’s Day stories involving non-romantic love. Romantic love has gotten more than its fair share of stories – but love is far more than most Valentine’s Day tales make it out to be. In fact, ancient Greece (the birthplace of Western civilization!) had four different words for love, referring to four different emotions. Only one of these (eros) is what Valentine’s Day stories typically revolve around. In today’s post, I’d like to share some potential story prompts having to do with the three less explored types of love.

Storge – brotherly love, affection

love1

“Of course I love him. He’s my brother. Even if he does drive me crazy.”

Familial ties, whether between parents and children, siblings, cousins, or people who simply share being in the “family” of humankind, are the most natural of all the forms of love. It ignores reasons for being loveable, and simply loves because of who one is. When a soldier throws himself in front of a bomb to save his squad, when five people are trapped in a submarine and suddenly feel a kinship with each other that drives them to work together to get them all to safety, when a tribe goes to war because one of their members has been wronged, it is a form of storge.

Possible plots:

  • A brother and a sister superhero who haven’t spoken in years need to come together, work out their differences, and forgive each other before they can take on the new supervillain who is terrorizing the city.
  • To save her son’s life, a mother must make a perilous journey through the jungle to find a forbidden cure. Terrible things are spoken of the cure – they say it could unleash evil upon the world, kill the one who uses it, or even worse. But that doesn’t matter – without the cure her son will die, so into the jungle she must go.
  • Four students – a computer geek, a football player, a marching band trumpeter, and a poet – stumble across a portal that takes them back in time to ancient China. They have to work together to get back home, and in the process, become fast friends.

 

Philia – friendship love

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Bromances, groups of girlfriends, teammates, coworkers – lasting friendships built on shared interests or activities have at their heart a deep-rooted affection for the other person. Delighting in another person’s company, enjoying playing a sport with someone, being committed to a team and one’s teammates in order to accomplish a goal – all of these are examples of philia. Good friendships have staying power that is worth celebrating, and that staying power is love.

  • In the future, a special forces unit of six Terrans must face their largest challenge yet: to infiltrate the alien high command and steal the key to the global defense system that will allow Earth to fight back against its alien overlords.
  • The “problem kid” at the orphanage at Tonzimmel joins its freezeball team in a last-ditch effort to avoid getting expelled, but finds new life in the game and in the companionship of the other boys on the team.
  • Two teams of explorers races against each other through an alien jungle to find the famous Ice Crystal. The team that finds it first will go down in history, while the losers will be condemned to forced labor to pay off the huge costs of the expedition. Both teams have skilled members and a drive to win – but our heroes have a secret weapon: they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and trust each other completely, while the other team is comprised of professional treasure-hunters who view this as just another job.

 

Agape – unconditional love

love3

Forgiveness, self-sacrifice, returning good for evil, wishing others well when they don’t deserve it – these are the actions of unconditional love, and the plots that stick with readers for years. Characters who act unselfishly, who give so that others can benefit, who refuse to take advantage even when they are justified in doing so, show us the truest reflection of the best kind of love. Unfortunately, while these stories are some of the most powerful when they occur in real life, they are also the hardest to believably create in fiction. Here are some ideas that might inspire you:

 

  • A young gang member with no family shoots a man in cold blood as part of his initiation, but gets caught by the police. Rather than press charges, the victim’s brother and his wife adopt the gang member as their own son.
  • A knight on his way home from war sees that a helpless village is being attacked by marauders. Though they aren’t officially under his protection, he charges off to face the armies single-handedly, sacrificing himself to ensure the villagers’ escape.
  • After converting to a religion against the wishes of her husband, a woman finds herself divorced, penniless, and without any job skills. Nonetheless, she prays for her husband every day for the next fifty years, even as she struggles to put food on the table, that he will find the truth and peace that she knows he needs.

 

So this Valentine’s Day, take time to appreciate your family, to enjoy your friends, to serve others, and to read and write stories about characters who do the same – because love is about far more than romance.

Savvy Saturday – Unique Selling Propositions

Authors are good at many things: storytelling, character development, world-building, and so on. One thing that many authors are not good at, however, is marketing. Why should I buy your books, readers ask. Some authors respond by focusing on the plot of their specific latest novel. “You should read The Quest of the Unaligned,” I might say, “because it’s an exciting YA novel about a security chief from a technologically advanced city who has to go on a quest through a magical country – and it turns out that he’s their long-lost prince.” This is a good start, but this sort of statement doesn’t really answer the question of why your book is a better investment of money or time than are other books in your genre.

The answer to these questions can be found in marketing theory. Specifically, developing a “unique selling proposition” (USP) for each of your books can help you better communicate with potential readers about what needs your book fills, and who would benefit from purchasing it. A unique selling proposition is what it sounds like – a proposition, or reason, that you can use to sell your product, and it has to be unique compared to other products in the market. Now, by the time most companies have their product, they already know what their unique selling proposition is going to be. This is because the traditional way of doing marketing is to start by identifying a need for a given target market, then design and manufacture a product to meet that need. In contrast, most entrepreneurs (including authors!) tackle marketing the other way around. We start by creating a product – writing a book – that tells the story that we want to tell, then we try to figure out who else would like it and why.

The first step in developing a USP for a book is to identify what broad category your book falls in. What other books will it be compared to? For a product to succeed, it first has to have a minimum level of quality in all core areas that customers expect (e.g. no matter what brand of soda you buy, you expect it to be fizzy, you expect it to be sweet, and you expect the bottle to not fall apart in your hand). If a product lacks a minimum level of quality in one of these common elements, customers will refuse to buy the product, or will be sorely disappointed if they do buy. So what are the common elements in a book in your genre? What is it that every book has to have for it to pass the “yes, this is an acceptable part of this genre” test? Make a list! Some elements that come to mind for any book include proper formatting, a general lack of grammatical and typographical errors, a certain minimum word count, and, if a story, a beginning, middle, and end. Additional (and more interesting) components get added once you start talking about genres. Science fiction and fantasy novels, for instance, have to be set in a time and place that is not “the real world here and now.” If you promote a book as being a fantasy novel, for instance, but the only fantasy elements turn out to be a figment of the main character’s imagination, many readers will feel cheated.

Once you have made a list of all the elements that a book in your genre must have, put it to one side and forget about it. Readers don’t need to be told that a new soda is sweet and fizzy – they need to be told what’s different about it compared to all the other sodas out there. In your case, you need to make a new list: the features that your book has that are unique. This can include more tangible elements of your book, such as a plot, character, and setting, and less tangible benefits that readers might get from your book, such as enjoyment due to your sense of humor, scintillating arguments, or beautiful literary flow. The elements that you identify are what you can use to develop a unique selling proposition.

For instance, while academic books on economics exist by the dozens, only one (that I am aware of) attempts to discuss and teach real issues of economics by couching them in the context of vampires and zombies. In the context of fiction, think about the benefits that readers in your genre are looking for, then promise them that plus something else. That something else, based on the unique elements that you as a unique person have built into your book, will give readers a unique reason to buy. Why should they buy your fantasy novel instead of any other fantasy novel? Maybe because your fantasy novel is uniquely dark yet lyrical in tone, and based on Chinese mythology. Or maybe because it is one of the only novels that is set in ancient Rome and features a female superhero protagonist. Whatever the reason, the stronger and more unique your USP, the more likely your book will be to stand out, catch readers’ interest, and persuade them to give your story a try.

So what’s your book’s unique selling proposition? Leave a note in the comments below!

Savvy Saturday: A Typology of Magical Creatures

What kinds of magical creatures should populate your fantasy world? Well, that’s a decision you’ll have to make for yourself, but there are three basic categories you can use. First, there are types of magical creatures that a reader is already familiar with (e.g. fire-breathing dragons, unicorns, etc). Second, there are types that the reader may be slightly familiar with but that an author has imbued with distinctive characteristics (e.g. the basilisk in Harry Potter). Third, there are types that have never been seen before (e.g. fire spiders in The Quest of the Unaligned, or chulls and axehounds in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive). Each type comes with its own advantages and disadvantages for fantasy authors who want to use them.

 

Standard magical creatures

dragon1The major advantage of using types of creatures that readers already know about is that, well, readers already know about them. You can make a passing reference to a town being laid waste by a dragon, and readers fill in the gaps: a fire-breathing winged lizard, likely with an inordinate desire for gold and a heated temper, flew out of his cave in the mountains and burned down the village. Just like you don’t have to tell readers that kings outrank peasants, or that bread is a food, you don’t have to tell them that dragons are dangerous and likely only able to be bested by a hero (or your protagonist). If the point of your story is its characters and their interaction rather than its worldbuilding, if the creatures in question are not vital to the plot, or if your story is set in a version of our own world where legends are true (e.g. Harry Potter), then including standard magical characters in a plot can give your story a fun twist, without too much work on an author’s part.

The problem with using standard magical characters is that it can make a story feel derivative. There are only so many ways to slay a dragon, and they’ve all been written countless times. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a fresh take on dragon-slaying, but it does meant that you have to work harder to show readers why your story is different. Similarly, if you are focusing on building a magical world that is very different from Earth and its classic mythologies, it can be jarring to readers to have creatures show up that have no logical reason to be there. Finally, once you start importing magical creatures from a given culture, you are almost making an agreement with a reader to stay within given cultural guidelines for the rest of the story. Having leprechauns (Irish myth), sirens (Greek myth), and kitsune (Japanese myth) all running around in the same world, for instance, would seem strange, if not even wrong to reader sensibilities.

 

Adapted magical characters

dragon2In this category lie all creatures that are trope subversions, spin-offs, inspirations, or even just distant cousins of their more standard magical counterparts. These creatures all have the same name as commonly known magical critters (e.g. dragons), but they are different in either a minor or a major way from what readers expect. One great example in print is Patricia C. Wrede’s Dealing With Dragons series, in which readers learn that dragons are honorable creatures who enjoy cherries jubilee, choose their own king, and are in a constant struggle against a society of wizards whose staffs can absorb dragons’ magic. The advantage of using this category is that authors can surprise and intrigue readers who are looking for something “familiar yet different.”

The disadvantage of using adapted magical characters is that readers can get confused or even irritated if an author changes too many things that are traditionally part of that character’s makeup. Major physical characteristics are typically the last to be changed – a centaur, for instance, must be half-horse and half-man to be considered a centaur. Traditionally, they are seen as wise, mysterious prophets and/or astrologers. But in Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted, centaurs don’t even have human intelligence, much less exceptional wisdom. Instead, they are kept in zoos and are fed apples by human visitors. Are these “real” centaurs? Should the author have written them this way? As a more extreme example, suppose that an author writes about creatures called “goblins” who are small and ugly in appearance (a traditional goblin description), but live in trees, eat berries and nuts, spend their days playing music and dancing, and are kind and generous to all who can look past their external appearance. Are these actually goblins? If an author is writing about a race like this, it might actually do the reader a disservice to give the creature a name that will bring to mind a large number of attributes that will be inaccurate. Instead, this brings us to the third category…

 

Original magical characters

Now, to start off, we should note that simply calling an already established magical species by a different name does not make it an original character. If you have a fire-breathing lizard with scales hard as diamonds that loves gold and has a mean streak, please just call it a dragon, a wurm, a wyvern, or whatever your myth-based name of choice is. But don’t call it a Snarglax or a Death-Lizard just because you want to avoid having “dragons” in your book. Your readers will see through you in a second, and they won’t approve.

cerberusGood original magical characters might combine two (or more!) creatures that actually exist on Earth (e.g. flying horses/monkeys), give more or different powers to a creature that actually exists (e.g. horses with human-level intellect, vultures that spit lightning, or octopuses with mind control powers), make a creature abnormally large or small (e.g. Shelob the giant spider), make significant physical changes to a real creature (e.g. a two-headed dog or an alligator with a dorsal fin and six legs), combine some features previously mentioned, or actually just make a creature up. Even made-up creatures, however, are typically modeled after real-life physiology to a certain extent, if just to give readers enough mental cues to be able to picture the creature you’re describing. The good thing about this category of creatures is its uniqueness. An author can use original characters to add breadth, depth, and a sense of wonder to a story. They raise new possible puzzle solutions, plot twists, and reasons for characters to interact in different ways. They keep the reader guessing and enthralled in the world an author has created.

What’s the downside, then? First, it takes a lot of work for an author to create realistic original magical characters that make sense in a world. Second, it can be a lot of work for readers to interact with a world that incorporate original magical characters. The more new things readers have to carry around in their heads, the more likely they’ll be to get confused and forget some of them.

 

So what type of magical creature should you put in your world? Now that you know your options, it’s up to you!

Savvy Saturday: Author-Character Relationships

Here’s an interesting question for you readers out there: to what extent does your image of what an author is like as a person come from what his or her characters are like as people? Here’s why I ask: we can all think of Hollywood and stage actors who are viewed as having certain personality traits (e.g. being smart, being funny, being heroic, being obnoxious) based on the roles they play – this is the reason that certain actors are such good endorsers of products, because viewers associate the actor with their larger-than-life character portrayals. (For instance, last year’s Superbowl commercial for Jaguar used this principle to suggest that their cars are driven by super-villains.) In contrast, I almost never hear people talk about how an author “must be” a certain way because he or she writes characters who are that way.

On one level, the conflation of actor/character makes more sense than a conflation of writer/character. After all, actors can only play one character at a time, whereas writers are responsible for all of them at once. But at the same time, the connection between writers and their characters is far more direct and real than that between actors and characters. Actors are hired to play roles written by someone else, for someone else’s story. The good ones make the role “their own,” but any portrayal is still a collaboration between the actor, the script-writer, and the director. Authors, on the other hand, are wholly responsible for the creation, development, and portrayal of every character they write. Many authors like to say that their characters “come to life” and then drag a plot off in whatever direction they choose – but still, characters only have power, life, and “free will” that the author gives them.

More than this, authors’ characters are a reflection of how the author views the world. They have to be. Every human being processes the world through his or her own unique set of experiences, beliefs, and expectations. People may view the world cynically or optimistically; they may read every compliment as purposeful flattery, or be completely blind to people who are manipulating them. One can watch any political debate, for instance, to see people with different beliefs reacting very differently to the same speech. And authors are people too. As much as we would like to be objective recorders and discussants of reality, our writing instead reflects the way we see the world – our deepest beliefs, our biases, and the way we think people truly are.

With these facts in mind, we could argue that characters an author writes should be in some way a true portrayal of what an author is like – and in fact, a truer portrayal of the author than roles are of Hollywood actors. Yet I rarely see this point being made by either readers or by fellow authors. “I am nothing like my characters,” authors like to assert. “They are independent creatures; they are my dreams and fears and chance meetings in the street. They are psychological constructs made flesh; they are no more ‘me’ than you are.” And yet at the same time, we admit that our characters are “our children.” We grow deeply attached to them; we know how they react to stress, how they talk to each other, what pushes their buttons. We sometimes know them better than we know ourselves. Perhaps we don’t want to admit that our characters reflect who we are, or perhaps we are blind to it.

In my own writing, I find that my characters are all a part of who I am, who I want to be, or who I don’t want to be. Though I have never written a fictional “author insertion character” (a supposedly fictional character who says what the author would say and acts how the author would act in any situation), I find that I do have a certain set of beliefs and actions that are more or less conceivable for any of my protagonists to choose. For instance, I have been told – and it was a surprise to me to realize this – that the characters in the works I have written thus far tend to value truth more highly than most. Even villains, a reader noticed, don’t purposefully lie as a matter of course, and a protagonist’s word is their bond, no matter who they are. I hadn’t noticed, but the reader was completely right.

I suppose that writing characters with similar habits or beliefs is a form of self-typecasting, just as some actors try to only play certain types of roles on stage or screen. But I would argue that writing type-casting gives more information about authors than it does to actors. Actors can choose a type of role to play, a type of role they are believable in and good at, and stick with it. There can be (though there does not have to be) a separation between who they are and who they play. In business speak, one could say that there is a distinction between their self and their brand, or professional image. But as authors, what makes us good writers is the fact that our selves are not separated from our books. “Write what you know,” the adage goes, because when you try to write something that you don’t like or that you don’t know, it falls flat. When, therefore, we find similarities across characters, or similarities across protagonists in different books an author writes, I would suggest that those are glimpses into the author’s self that he or she may not even recognize.

So that brings me back to my original question. To what extent do you create a mental image of what an author is like as a person based on his or her characters? To what extent do you think we should? As both an author and a critical reader, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

 

 

Savvy Saturday – Cultural Inspirations

The world around us is a never-ending source of inspiration for stories. The physical environment shapes our culture. Our culture shapes our values. Our values shape our desires, goals, and dreams. All of the above shape our stories.

Today’s Savvy Saturday post highlights three unique values and practices found outside the United States of America, from the point of view of a novelist.

1. Gemutlichkeit (German) or hygge (Danish): a concept that ties being in a warm or cozy place with being in a mental state of well-being, good cheer, belonging, and relaxation.

hearth

This concept, though English doesn’t have the word for it, is at the core of many of our Christmas season songs. The weather may be dreadful, and the night outside may be dark and bitter, but inside, we can celebrate having the comfort of home and good friends and family, a bright fire, good music, a hot beverage, and a warm heart and spirit.

This concept could be put to good use in a fantasy context. One could imagine a society that seems cold and hard as the ice and snow that cover the ground all year. Going outside is an ordeal to be faced with determination, and thus work, travel, and any contact with outsiders is conducted grimly and efficiently. Ambassadors from this land, when far from home, would maintain their rigidity and cool demeanor as they have been taught. They might be seen as brusque, hard, and even ruthless to people from other lands. But at home – ah, at home, these people transform into different versions of themselves – people whose hearts are merry and whose countenances are bright. Ruddy good cheer and laughter emerge as the icy external face of society melts away, and all who gather around the table throw off the cares of the world outside and embrace the joy of togetherness. What kinds of stories could be told about clashes of cultures? Of travelers from other lands who think these people to be heartless, having never experienced the heart of their society. Of the travelers from this society who discover that people in other lands face less severe threats, but their joys are less felt as well. Stories of love and discovery; stories of war and misunderstanding; stories of snow and fire and separation and redemption. What story would the concept of gemutlichkeit inspire for you?

2. La Tomatina, a tomato-throwing festival in Valencia, Spain.

tomatina

Twenty thousand people come to this town every year to throw tomatoes at each other for an hour, just for the sport of it. The festival traces its origins back to 1945, when some boys got in a scuffle with a parade participant, who began throwing tomatoes at them. It turned into a town-wide event over the years, and the government eventually gave the festival its seal of approval. It is now a major tourist attraction – plus, the acidity from the tomatoes cleans the town’s cobblestone streets, leaving them in pristine condition after the tomato pulp is washed away.

This example goes to show that nearly anything can be turned into a believable festival – especially if you have rich tourists in neighboring cities who you can convince to come and take part, and part with their money at the same time. Remember, this is the same country that features the Running of the Bulls, where people literally let themselves be chased by stampeding large animals with horns, just to show that they’re fast enough not to die. What strange festivals and celebrations might your fantasy world celebrate? How did they get started? What is the attraction of this festival for participants and outsiders? What “normal” societal rules are suspended for the duration of the festival? How often do people die? Is there a prize for the winner? Details like this can make your world come to life and stick with readers long after they’ve finished reading your book.

3. Shinrin-yoku: a Japanese health concept involving taking short trips to a forest and breathing in the aromatic air there for health benefits.

forest

The health benefits of spending time in nature have been discussed and expounded upon by scholars in various cultures. What if, however, the stakes for spending time in nature, or in a particular forest, were much higher? One could easily imagine that a druid or other sorcerer could hold an entire people in thrall by infecting them with a magical disease that could only be kept at bay through regular visits to a forest, where the trees and other plants would emit an air-borne counter to the disease’s effects. Alternatively, this curse might have been the guarantor of a standard loyalty pledge given by peasants in ancient times, that they would not leave the land of the nobleman whom they served. After hundreds of years, however, society may have progressed and history been forgotten, leaving only the knowledge that periodic trips to the forest are vital for maintaining one’s health.

Based on this cultural belief, two (or more) different kinds of stories could unfold. First, a traveler might come to town, get infected, and need to identify the cause of the curse and how to break it, even as the locals insist that the forest is good and life-saving rather than being the source of their illness. Alternatively, a daring girl might decide to leave the village and see the world, but take some potted plants from the forest with her to keep her in good health. This might work for a while, as the plants emit a certain amount of the required chemicals, but it is not enough. Over time, the girl begins to sicken, and she must find a way to break the curse – or find another forest to cure her – before she dies. Of course, these are just two examples; how might you incorporate this cultural idea into a plot?

As authors, we should be grateful for and inspired by the rich cultural diversity of the world around us. Fantasy authors shouldn’t settle for creating forgettable societies; we should strive to incorporate things into our worlds’ physical landscapes (e.g. forests) and cultural landscapes (e.g. festivals and social practices) that will deeply impact the values and desires of our characters, and thus drive our plots to stick in readers’ minds and keep them turning pages and coming back for more.

What books have you read that have done this well? What other cultural practices or values might inspire a thoughtful fantasy setting?

Savvy Saturday – Complex Characters are Our Friends

One tip for writers I read recently was as follows: the best stories are made of simple plots about complex characters. This is a nice maxim, but somewhat difficult to implement. What makes a complex character? Well, many things. But here are three tips to get you started:

  1. Complex motivations.

Just like real people aren’t driven toward a single goal with a single purpose, but instead have multiple purposes that lead them to make sometimes seemingly irrational choices, good complex characters have motivations that pull them in different directions. Alaric, for instance, hero of The Quest of the Unaligned, has a strong sense of duty, coupled with a drive for personal success. He also, however, tends to shrug off risks when he alone bears the consequences, or when he thinks that he can handle whatever may face him. These different motivations pull Alaric in opposite directions when a threatening situation arises, depending on who else is involved in the situation, what he believes his duty to be, and how dangerous the threat appears. As opposed to a robot or a Black-Robed-Evil-Mastermind who will always act in the same way, Alaric will judge the situation and act how he thinks best.

  1. Complex worries, fears, and weaknesses.

Similar to the above, good characters won’t have just a single weakness or fear that keeps them from achieving their goals. While one weakness may be the point of the story – the one that they eventually overcome – overcoming it should not turn the character into a perfect individual. The other main character of The Quest of the Unaligned, Laeshana, has a number of fears that she attempts to keep from controlling her. They aren’t all spelled out for readers, but they shape the way she reacts to situations. First, she hates being looked down upon for her background, and tends to react heatedly to insults by Cadaeren’s nobles. More personally, she is afraid of losing Alaric, and is thus especially bothered by his stubborn refusal to learn things that could save his life. She also worries about the future of her country, while feeling frustrated that she is in many ways powerless to change anything.

  1. Complex interests and personality traits.

As I’ve discussed in previous posts, one powerful way of giving characters depth is to give them a hobby or other trait that is “irrelevant” to the story. Maybe your juggler loves insects and collects interesting specimens in each town the circus visits. Maybe a thief took a few years of music lessons in his/her childhood and still plays. Maybe a banker spends every Saturday afternoon hiking with his brother and enjoying nature. As real people, we have a multitude of roles we play and facets to our lives; to reflect reality and give a rich story experience to readers, authors therefore must represent our characters as real people to our audiences.

 

What are some of your favorite “real” characters from a book? What about them made them feel alive to you?

Savvy Saturday – Thankfulness

Happy early Thanksgiving! In this season of gratitude, I am especially thankful for a Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday with no classes to take or teach – which will hopefully result in some extra writing time! As we consider the blessings we’ve been given and the abundance we can be thankful for, you can also take this time to do the same for your characters. What a person is thankful for says a lot about them and their situation. Here are three examples:

  • A character might be thankful for basic necessities. If your character is living on the street, he may be thankful for an overhang that lets him shelter from the rain, or a store that lets him sit inside and warm up in the winter. If she is living in the parched desert, she may be very conscious and grateful for a spring of water. Even when your characters’ situations are bettered, they may be more mindful and conscious of the small things they have that others take for granted. A pair of warm socks, a hot meal that won’t make you sick, or a bed that’s all your own might be amazing luxuries.

 

  • A character might be thankful for relationships. Whether you have an extremely social character, a character who is lonely, a character whose parents died, or a character who is very close to his/her parents, their relationships with their coworkers, family, and friends may be high on their list of things to be thankful for. What will this translate to in terms of their actions? Maybe they would drop everything, including their responsibilities, if a friend needed them. Maybe they don’t want to hurt the people who love them and so put up with a bad situation, or maybe they care so much about the people who love them that they’re always trying to interfere to make their lives better. Alternatively, a character might take people and relationships completely for granted, if they’ve never been faced with loss or been taught to appreciate the importance of people.

 

  • A character might be thankful for opportunities. A character who is from a small town might be thankful for the opportunity to travel. Or they might be thankful that they own their small piece of land so they don’t have to leave the place they grew up. Alternatively, a character who has been raised on the road might be thankful for the opportunities they’ve had to go everywhere and do everything that they’ve done, or thankful to eventually have the opportunity to settle down and grow roots. The son of a noble lord might be thankful for the opportunity to learn to read and write, to hunt and strategize, to rule justly and to be in charge of his fiefdom. Or he might hate it, and be thankful for the opportunity to run away and join a band of travelers heading into the unknown.

Knowing what your characters are thankful for helps you write them realistically and differently both from each other and from you as an author. For instance, while Alaric, the hero of The Quest of the Unaligned, is thankful for the training he’s received and the opportunities he’s been given to advance his skills and careers, his friend Laeshana is thankful for a supportive family who raised her to think critically and to do what she believes to be right even when it’s difficult or frowned upon by society, and the young ruahk Naruahn is just thankful for his magic and the ability it gives him to fly and transport himself wherever he wants.

So what are your characters thankful for, and how will it impact the decisions they make? Leave a comment below!

Savvy Saturday – Moral Malleability

angel_demon_foxesI attended an interesting academic presentation today on the topic of “Moral Malleability.” While it was written in a marketing context, it was very relevant to writing fiction: it dealt with how people tend to respond when a company (or, in a novelist’s case, a person or organization) does something we perceive as wrong. There are four main ways in which a person/character can react when they perceive that they have been wronged: they can choose to forgive unilaterally (not harbor ill feelings toward the other party), seek to reconcile (both parties work together to move forward), do nothing (but harbor ill feelings toward the other party), and most dramatically, seek revenge. Muahahaha. (The evil laughter wasn’t part of the academic presentation.)

Now, we all know that seeking revenge is typically wrong. It often involves behaviors that we would admit violate our own morals, or that even break the law. For instance, we’d all say that cheating, stealing, lying, and so forth are wrong. They’re not the kind of actions that we condone, and they’re not the kind of descriptions that we would apply to ourselves. But research has discovered that when people find that they’ve been wronged, their sense of morality tends to…well…fudge, a little. Suddenly, things that yesterday you would have said are wrong, today you might say are justified.

How so? Let me give an example. Researchers promised participants a dollar for filling out a long, complex survey. At the end of the survey, however, some of the participants were told that the company had made a mistake and hadn’t meant to include them in the study, but they would receive a dollar anyway; other participants were told that they shouldn’t have been included, and they would only receive 50 cents; and the last group of participants were told that they shouldn’t have been included, and they wouldn’t receive any money at all. Clearly, the last two situations are unfair and wrong, with the last being worse than the second. After this, all three groups of people were asked to complete a second (unrelated) research task: they were supposed to complete a number of math problems on paper, and self-report how many of the problems they got right, when they were showed the right answer on the next screen. The more problems they reported getting right, the more of a monetary reward they would receive. (Thus, respondents had a financial motive to cheat.)

As you might expect, the respondents in the condition that were cheated out of a dollar tended to report far more correct answers than those who were cheated out of 50 cents, who reported more than those who were paid the full dollar they were promised. Well, this makes sense, we might say to ourselves. They should have received money from the company – they’re just cheating in name only to get the money that was due to them.

But wait. There’s more. Another study was done where separate participants were asked to think about a time that a company did something that made them angry (half the respondents), or to think about a time that a company did something that made them mildly frustrated (the other half). Then they were asked how wrong it would be to borrow an item from a clothing store, wear it to an event, then return the item to the store for a full refund. The respondents who remembered being angry about something a company had done were far more likely to say that it was morally acceptable to “borrow” new clothing from a store with the purpose of wearing it and returning it – even though this company had done nothing to wrong them.

So what do these marketing and psychology findings tell us about our stories? Unfortunately, they tell us how real people tend to think and behave. If your character was wronged by someone, their “normal” morality may slip, and they may do, say, and try to justify things that normally they would view as wrong. This may involve trying to obtain through immoral methods what they believe they were owed, taking pure revenge (you hurt me, now I’m going to hurt you), or more practicing what the presentation today called “moral malleability” – letting your morals slide in a completely different situation because you’re feeling hurt and wronged by someone else.

Of course, this won’t happen all the time. Characters (and people) who have a firm moral compass will often resist the urge to do wrong, even when they’ve had wrong done to them. But whether or not your characters ultimately decide to do what’s right or wrong, to turn the other cheek or seek an eye for an eye, it’s worth knowing as an author that psychologically, the temptations are there. Believing that something is wrong isn’t the same as not doing the wrong thing, especially under pressure, or in a situation where one has just been wronged. So what will your character do? That’s up for you as an author to decide – but for realistic stories, make your decision based on realistic psychology.

Savvy Saturday – Rewriting: An Examplar

When most readers think about what writers do, they might tend to think that our time is spent something like this:

pie-1

In actuality, it may tend to look something more like this:*

pie-2

*These pie charts are illustrative and do not reflect any real data

Of course, these percentages vary greatly across authors – some writers spend far more time outlining and far less time revising, others spend even less time writing a first draft compared to everything else they do, and so forth. But one common thing that all good writers do, which hardly ever gets seen by readers, is spend a great deal of time editing and rewriting.

As readers, we usually only get to see the final as-good-as-it’s-gonna-get draft of a project, without seeing the in-between phases, the crossed-out ideas, and the clunky sentence structure that good authors catch in the second and third drafts (or that their editors and beta readers point out in the ninth and tenth!). There’s a good reason for this – authors, like anyone else, are understandably reluctant to share things with a public audience that are not their best work. We want to be judged on things we are proud of, not our works in progress. Unfortunately, this can make it difficult for young authors to learn how to edit and rewrite their own works. Many young authors err in one of two ways: thinking that they’ll “never be as good” as an author whose published works are excellent and so not trying, or in a spirit of over-confidence, thinking that “just like” successful authors, their first draft is worthy of publication. Both views can be tempered by a good hard look at what actually happens when an author rewrites their work.

Since we are in the midst of NaNoWriMo (a month long period of first draft binge-writing for novelists), I thought it might be useful to give a real life example of this process, focusing on my published novel The Quest of the Unaligned. This book went through three major drafts (plus a very detailed scene-by-scene outline) before it was finally published, and each draft worked to improve the manuscript in significant ways.

For instance, here is the first page of my novel as it stands in the final published version:

Of the thousand noises, movements, and smells that fought for Alaric’s notice in Peet’s crowded bar, only one thing captured his attention: the man who had just materialized on one side of the room. Alaric slammed down his tankard of beer in shock, squinting through the garish colored lights that blinked on every wall. If it had been later in the evening, he would have assumed that what he was seeing was merely a beer-induced figment of his imagination. As it was, he had just raised his first tankard to lips. That meant that, impossible as it seemed, a long-haired and equally long-bearded man – wearing a robe of all outlandish things – had just appeared out of thin air.

That was news on two fronts. While Alaric would have watched the man carefully in any circumstances, as per his responsibilities as a security chief of Tonzimmel’s First Security Force, the newcomer’s technology made him particularly of interest. Alaric mentally skimmed back through the past year’s SecuriTech Bulletins even as he watched the stranger turn in bemused circles on the side of the room. No, he thought, there hadn’t been even a single article hinting that researchers were developing personal transportation devices. 

That meant that the technology was supposed to be a secret. A slow smile grew on Alaric’s face. He could almost see the commendation letter being put into his file right now for being the first officer to identify a new, potentially dangerous technology in use. But then he stared harder at the stranger, at the way the robed man kept turning as if he didn’t know where he was, at how he cocked his head almost to his shoulder so that his beard stuck out at a forty-five degree angle to his body, and Alaric began rethinking his conclusion. The stranger wasn’t acting like either a member of a covert government operation or a thief. But if he wasn’t either of those, where had he gotten his transportation device? From outside of Tonzimmel?

Alaric snorted into his beer. That thought was even more unlikely than his last: the only realm beyond the city-state of Tonzimmel was Cadaeren, whose population consisted solely of superstitious farmers and lunatic noblemen. But it didn’t really matter, in the end, where the technology had come from. Whatever its origin, Alaric told himself, his supervisor in the TFSF would want a full report. 

With that in mind, Alaric continued to watch the robed man, hiding his interest behind his tankard. The stranger slowly zig-zagged out from the wall where he had first appeared, still turning in circles every once in a while, his head cocked at that odd angle over his shoulder. Eventually, a white strobe-light flashed across the bar’s flickering anti-grav tables, lighting up the bar’s crowded interior for a few seconds. It lasted only long enough to give Alaric a glimpse of the man’s clothing, but that was enough to make his eyes snap open even wider. 

The stranger’s white robe was trimmed in silver that nearly blinded Alaric as it flashed in the strobe light, and he wore a belt of the same color inlaid with colored stones that sparkled with inner fire. Alaric let out a silent whistle at the man’s nerve. Even the wealthiest families he guarded all wore the sensible shirt and pants uniforms of Tonzimmel. If the stranger’s jewels were real, he was openly flaunting more wealth than anyone in the crowded room could make in a lifetime. And if they were fake, then the stranger was just crazy.

Given everything he’d seen thus far, though, that might not be a bad guess. Maybe the man did come from Cadaeren. Alaric allowed himself a brief smile, but didn’t take his eyes off the robed man. He still held his head cocked at an angle, so that his hair – ash-blond, Alaric now saw – all fell to one shoulder. Every second or two, he twitched to peer off in a different direction, and each time, he took a few steps towards the bar where Alaric sat. Was the man looking for someone? 

Just as the thought crossed Alaric’s mind, the stranger pivoted directly towards him. His gray eyes went wide in his deeply wrinkled face. “Prince Alaric! It’s you! Finally!” 

Alaric had been in the middle of sipping his beer; he inhaled it instead, and coughed violently. “Excuse me?”

My original idea in my outline began a little differently. Take a look! (Note that this isn’t in complete sentences: when I’m outlining for myself I tend to shorten things for my own sake.)

 

We meet Alaric in a bar in the city of Tonzimmel. He's had a boring day as a security guard for a rich family's home, has watched them come and go with their machines, hasn't had a chance to use his training. Considers what to do that night - doesn't have friends, maybe he'll go train with weapons more. That's good efficient use of time; maybe he'll be able to take a test and be promoted once his programming gets as good as his skill with basic weapons. (Scene of the bar is hectic and loud and with lots of bright lights & colors, but he's tuned it out. He's used to it.)  

Ruahkini "pops" into the bar, Alaric's mildly surprised. Never seen that trick before. He doesn't believe it's magic, though. Ruahkini tries to tell him that he's the crown prince of the neighboring kingdom of Cadaeren, Alaric doesn't believe him. Ruahkini tells Alaric he has to go on a quest, Alaric rolls his eyes. Ruahkini offers to bet - if he wins, Alaric will go on a quest for him. If Alaric wins, Ruahkini will pay all his bar bills for the upcoming month.

The first major difference between these scenes, of course, is that the final version begins “in media res” – or in the middle of the action – whereas my outline set up the scene more before anything actually happened. This is a useful tip for writers: start your story when things are interesting, then flash back or use dialogue to explain what’s going on. If you start with someone doing something boring, your audience will be bored too.

My initial draft of this scene, after deciding to start with Ruahkini popping into the bar, was considerably shorter than the final version. You can see for yourself here:

 If Alaric had not just sat down with his first tankard of the evening, he would have assumed that the man who had materialized by his side was a mead-induced figment of his imagination. As it was, he was still entirely sober, which meant that an old man wearing a robe had indeed just appeared out of thin air. That would make for an interesting entry in his daily security report: personal transportation devices were finally on the market. Alaric hadn’t expected them to be invented within his lifetime, but then again, who could keep up with technology? He took another drink from his tankard, exaggerating his movements to mask his examination of the newcomer. If someone was selling personal transportation devices, after all, his boss would want to know. And it definitely wouldn’t hurt his own résumé if he were the first security chief in Tonzimmel to identify a potentially dangerous new technology and its owner. 

With that in mind, Alaric put his trained senses to work. First, the other man was clearly a foreigner, as evidenced by his strange clothing. His robe was a brilliant white, trimmed in sky-blue with a matching belt, and inlaid with large sapphires. Alaric let out a silent whistle at the man’s nerve. Even the wealthiest families he guarded all wore the sensible shirt and pants uniforms of Tonzimmel. If the stranger’s jewels were real, he was openly flaunting more wealth than anyone in the crowded bar would likely make in their lifetime. And if they were fake, then the stranger was just crazy. Though that might not be a bad guess, Alaric told himself, noting the way the man held his head cocked at an angle, so that his ash-blond hair all fell to one shoulder, and how he constantly jerked his thin torso from side to side as if looking for something. And then the stranger pivoted and looked him in the eye.  

“Alaric! It’s you! Finally!”

Alaric choked on his mead. “Excuse me?”

While there are many lines from this version that made it into the final draft, it’s definitely rough. In this version, Alaric is far more detached from the situation – he seems to be observing with mild interest and out of a sense of duty rather than with the keen attention and personal drive that powers him to observe Ruahkini in the final draft. The sense of place is also far more developed in the final draft, through concrete descriptions of Peet’s Bar and also a setting up of the existence of Tonzimmel, Cadaeren, and the basic relationship between the two. We also have a better feeling of who Alaric actually is in the final draft: this was accomplished by getting inside his head and going through his thought processes more carefully, showing his prejudices, his attention to detail, his occupation, and his deep sense of responsibility all within the first page. Of course, there were also tiny factual changes that took place such as exchanging mead for beer, having Ruahkini call Alaric by his royal honorific, and a far more violent reaction by Alaric to the mage’s appearance, all of which were done to make the story more believable and interesting.

A second draft between the first and final gives another interesting perspective – progress isn’t always linear! This draft is closer to the final one, but as you can see, some things were added that got taken out again before the manuscript went to press, and many of the descriptions from the final version are either in a different place in this draft, or hadn’t been added yet at all…

Of the thousand noises, movements, and smells that fought for Alaric’s notice in Peet’s crowded bar, only one thing captured his attention: the man who had just materialized on one side of the room. If it had been later in the evening, Alaric would have assumed that the old man in the strange robe was a beer-induced figment of his imagination. As it was, however, he had just sat down with his first tankard of the evening, which meant that the newcomer had indeed appeared out of thin air.

That was news. Nothing in the SecuriTech Bulletin had ever hinted that researchers were developing personal transportation devices. That meant, then, that either the technology was supposed to be a secret, or that it had been developed outside of Tonzimmel. Not that the second option was likely: the only realm beyond the city-state of Tonzimmel was Cadaeren, whose population consisted solely of superstitious farmers and lunatic noblemen. Alaric snorted into his beer at the thought, but kept his eyes fixed on the strange man in front of him. Wherever the transporter had come from, Alaric’s supervisor in the Tonzimmelian First Security Force would want a full report. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt Alaric’s own file with the TFSF if he were the first security chief in Tonzimmel to identify a new, potentially dangerous, technology in use.

Alaric squinted at the man across the room, mentally cursing the garish colored lights that blinked on every wall at Peet’s. Finally, a white strobe light flashed through the room, showing the newcomer’s robe to be a brilliant white, trimmed in silver, with a belt of the same color inlaid with colored stones that sparkled in the light. Alaric let out a silent whistle at the man’s nerve. Even the wealthiest families he guarded all wore the sensible shirt and pants uniforms of Tonzimmel. If the stranger’s jewels were real, he was openly flaunting more wealth than anyone in the crowded room could make in a lifetime. And if they were fake, then the stranger was just crazy. Though that might not be a bad guess – maybe the newcomer did come from Cadaeren. The man held his head cocked at an angle, so that his ash-blond hair all fell to one shoulder, and he constantly peered from side to side as if looking for something. And then he pivoted and looked Alaric in the eye.  

“Prince Alaric! It’s you! Finally!” 

Alaric coughed on his beer. “Excuse me?”

So how did I progress from my first draft to my final one? Some of these changes were based on suggestions from my writing group peers – things like, give us more information about where we are and why we care about Alaric right off the bat. Other changes were made by reading through the draft and getting stuck on wording or sentences or pacing or tone aspects that I didn’t like. These are the changes that take the most practice as a writer, and the most time. Between my second draft and my draft that I submitted for consideration to my publisher, I let the entire manuscript sit for months. When I came back to it with fresh eyes, I saw new ways of saying things that were (in my opinion), tighter, cleaner, and more interesting. I hope you feel the same way!

Now go write – and then when you think you’re done, go rewrite! You’ll be glad you did, and so will your readers.