En Violet

Miniskirts -- A Writing Visual

2012-01-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, a friend passed on what I consider some absolutely fantastic writing advice: "Writing should be like a miniskirt: Long enough to cover everything; short enough to be interesting."

A lot of agents mention on their blog what would be about the right length for a book, depending on genre and intended audience. I have heard agents say that after certain word counts, they just put down the query, because they know the book doesn't have a teardrop's chance on a hot stove.

There's some disagreement on the particulars, but basically any agent will tell you that the key is not to waste any of your words. Basically, if you're writing an 93k YA novel, then those 93k better be worth getting through. How do you think J.K. Rowling got away with writing 160k words books? Because people kept on reading them. People thought the words were worth it. At least, worth it enough to keep reading.

Every word should be covering something that needs to be covered. It should not be there covering things that are best left uncovered. This would be one of those areas where underwriting comes in handy. Saying less to mean more (something that I can admit I don't do perfectly. Yet.) is a great way to tighten up your prose and create subtle works.

I'll admit it, when I write out my first drafts, they tend to meander a bit. Sometimes I get a little lost. Sometimes I come up with something I think is a brilliant ideas but end up abandoning or something that just goes nowhere. That's why I edit. I go back and remove the words that aren't contributing to my plots. I go back and remove the words that aren't contributing to my characterization. I go back and remove the words that aren't contributing.

Basically: Long enough to cover what I want to cover. Short enough to be interesting.

What's your policy on text, length, and editing?

Are You Listening?

2012-01-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, some people I know and I had a silly debate about audiobooks. Basically, it boiled down to the question: Do they count?

One of the guys said they do, because you've experienced all of the words the author meant you to experience. The other said it didn't, because you weren't going through the reading process (this appears to be a common objection to audiobooks. I've gotten it from others as well). Me, I'm more of a middle of the line sort of person. I fully believe that listening to an audio counts as reading the book. On the other hand, I know that listening to a book takes less time than reading it and, for me at least, it's easier.

I've taken to using audiobooks a lot more lately. I use them for things like assigned reading. It's more convenient. I can do it on the treadmill (when I'm pretending to exercise) or when I have to walk to the store. I carry the book with me to leave my post-it notes, but mostly I just listen. And, strangely, I think I remember it better that way. I think I've a more auditory than visual memory.

Sorry for the rambly post. Basically, what I'm saying is, audiobooks count, and I'd like to come out in favor of them.

Do you listen to audiobooks? Do you count them as reading the books?

Intellectual Pet Peeves

2012-01-11T08:00:00.001-05:00

You know how some people can't stand knuckle-cracking or gum popping? Well, the thing that bugs me are certain intellectual facts that I just can't stand people getting wrong. This probably proves I'm a jerk, but there's stuff that bugs me. That probably makes me has been appearing in a lot of books lately, a fair amount of it wrong.

Now, if I wanted to cop out and blame my childhood, I'd say that my father used to always say that authors and screenwriters should not misrepresent or falsify history and then claim that they are telling truth, because people will believe that it is true when it isn't. (Let's just say, my father did not approve of Disney's Hercules.) I feel no embarrassment in having grown up to share this view.

When it comes to old stories being referenced in new stories, I get frustrated when people falsify the original story, and my flexibility on there is limited.

I mean, if you want to tell me that we were wrong about the Persephone story and it actually wasn't as shady as we've always thought, I'll accept that, at least to a point. Tell me how we got the story wrong and tell me what actually happened, and I'll accept that, so long as you haven't ignored the other facts (original mythos).

If you want to paint Artemis as a self-centered, shrill bint who only cares about clothes, I'm going to stop listening to you, because by that point you're just making stuff up and completely ignoring the entire base literature. To me, this is unforgivable.

So, yes, my intellectual pet peeve: people picking an original set of facts and lying about them/misrepresenting them.

This kind of pet peeve bugs a lot of people. It definitely bugs a lot of writers and artists, Captain Film Major for one. But I stand by it, if and only if because I already know from a lot of experience that it was not stop bugging me, to varying degrees. Just like my pet peeve will probably not stop bugging the people it bugs, again to varying degrees.

What's your intellectual pet peeve? Other pet peeves? Does my pet peeve bug you?

They're All Gonna Die

2012-01-09T08:00:00.001-05:00

I recently read a certain book series that shall remain nameless, because spoilers are evil, but suffice it to say it was one of those series where people die all the freaking time, and not just Red Shirts either. And, honestly, I didn't feel too bad for most of the characters who died. It was just the nature of the beast. It was just one of those things where the author says, "Here's a passel of folks. They're all gonna die. Let's go."

In the end, the characters basically shook out into a certain break-down.

33% = The Ultimate Red-Shirts.
No one cares about about these people at all, so when the writer bumps them off, people shrug and move on.
33% = Bad Guys
These are the folks you aren't supposed to like. So, really, when someone -- the narrator, a character, whoever -- bumps them off, you kind of applaud. And, let's face it, you don't feel sad at all.
33% = Good guys
When these people die, we all feel sad. Even if you know it's coming, that you the writer intends to kill him/her eventually, you're kind of hoping that isn't going to happen, that they'll find some way around his/her own rules and will keep that one.

The other 1% is the MC(s), who assumably, because you're reading a series, the writer has to keep around for the later books. It's functionally Contractual Immortality with a splash of Plot Armor.

Eventually, though, I'm just gonna say it, all that dying gets old. It's not that I have an inherent aversion to the death that some books just plain have to have. It's just that eventually that the time came that I felt like the writer was bumping off characters just to bump of characters. There came a point when I thought the writer was killing characters, and I'm included characters people liked who did not for any real reason have to die, just to prove that he or she could.

To me, it just looks like the writer was trying to shore up his or her Anyone Can Die cred. I get it, Anyone Can Die is a nice thought, because it establishes real world values in the text, exempting characters from MC Superpowers that annoy people, it maintains tension in the story but keeping stakes high, and it increases the motivations of any character who survives the death of someone they knew. But there's a line between Keeping It Real and Being Downright Arbitrary, and an overuse of the Anyone Can Die rule seems to be arbitrary and almost trying too hard.

I'm not going to lie, sometimes I worry I give my characters a little too much Plot Armor. I've bumped off characters before, but only because I thought it benefited the story and the plot. Once upon a time a character appeared in my head and one of the first things I knew about him -- lovely guy, great character -- was that he died in the middle. But I only knew he had to die, because the story would not have worked if he'd lived. Sometimes characters just have to die.

Sometimes they have to die. But they don't all have to die.

How do you feel about character's dying? How do you feel about killing characters? Do you do that a lot? How do you feel about writers who kill off a lot of characters?

Blog Memory and World Building

2012-01-07T08:00:00.001-05:00

Every now and then, I look back into my blog archives and scan through older posts. It's a very interesting thing. It's sort of like having a link to my past thoughts and all the weird/stupid/crazy things I thought once upon a time.

Once upon a time, when I was working on something I think I called the Epic Thing -- it's possible I never got around to titling that project -- I put a post on the blog about world building. (I'm not linking back to it, because in hindsight it wasn't my cleverest moment.) Back in my younger days, I didn't know how to balance the story in my head with the story on paper. I thought somehow that because I'd figured out a universe and a back story in my head, it all needed to appear on the page. And, you know, that's just not true.

No matter how big something is in my head, readers only needs to be told as much of it as I intend to use later -- they only need to know what's going to help them understand. Everything else is just wasting the reader's time. It might be cool and clever and interesting, but it's still a waste of time, since I'd just be throwing it out there just to throw it out there.

A few years ago, I hadn't realized how annoying that would be. Nowadays, it's one of my pet peeves as a reader. "Dear Author, just because you thought up a long back story doesn't mean anyone cares." That sort of thing. And in my revisions, I try to boil off the excess, the stuff I included but never ended up using.

This isn't to say I've given up on the idea of world-building. I still do that a lot. I'm working on my edits for Cordamant's Heir right now with both my notes and an alpha reader's, and one of the things I'm trying to make clear this time through are the rules of the political system. This is world-building, but it's world-building I need to do to make the plot clear. Because that's what really matters.

How's your writing going? How do you feel about elaborate back story? How do you build your worlds?

Rule of Ka'a (Thumb)?

2012-01-05T08:00:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine recently reminded me of the Fiction Rule of Thumb as explained my the Gods of Wisdom (a.k.a xkcd).

As sarcastic as the cartoon seems I can't deny it has something of a point. Though, I must admit, in my mind, there's a steeper curve. Because, it seems to me, there must come a point when you've made up so many words, what you're doing is no longer recognizable as writing in English.

This leads me to my quandary. A friend of mine (as yet un-Named, to this blog at any rate -- working on that) pointed out while looking at my MS for Cordamant's Heir that many names I use, while actual names from the planet Earth and probably familiar to some people, are not common in the Hemisphere in which I live and will be trying to publish. What this means, it turns out, is that they generate the same functional confusion on the part of the reader that a made up word would. I can't deny, that puts me dangerously far along the Number of Words Made Up scale.

This puts my in a difficult spot. I've done what I can to keep characters from having names that I think sound too alike, but I also don't want to sacrifice this aspect of the book and end up giving them all names like Rebbecca, Gil, and Peter. It would feel like I was deleting some of the color from the story. Then again, I don't want to confuse the heck out of or utterly lose the reader.

How do you feel about using non-Standard names for characters? Are they different from made up names in your mind? How do you feel about these as readers? Are they hard to keep track of.

Happy New Year

2012-01-03T08:00:00.001-05:00

Hello, my lovelies. I hope your New Year's off to a good start. Sorry I missed the holidays. I went to visit my cousin, which meant lots of good food and lots of museums, but also no Internet. On the other hand, my wonderful extended family picked up its newest member, so we couldn't have been happier these holidays. I hope you had a good holiday season as well.

Now, we all know what New Years means: New Year's Resolutions!

As we all know, I like posting my goals online. Makes me feel accountable. And, as always, I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours. ;-)

Writing Resolution

Edit and revise Cordamant's Heir, Legal Aliens, and Imogen and Leander. (Once again, I'm resolving to spend the rest of the year getting stuff done. We'll see how that goes.)
Mini Goal: Edit 1k words a day.
Finish Born of the Knife, my NaNo project. (Yeah, with that one, I basically did my 50k and then stopped, because I'd worn myself out. But, you know, I really liked it, so I'll definitely be finishing it up.)
Mini Goal: Write 700 words a day until I'm done. (Compared to NaNo rates, I'm wussing out, but it's much more manageable for my life.)

Reading

Read 65+ books this year. (I really came down to the wire on that one last year, so I'm not going to be upping the ante in this department. Still, I really think this goal helps me as a person.)
Read Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Yes, this is a revival from last year, because I didn't really finish it. Still planning on counting just watching the play.)
Read the Bible cover to cover. (Yep, another revival from last year. Let's see how long this one lasts.)

Blog

Post 3 times a week. Most likely MWF, but we'll see.
Get back into the blogosphere and read more blogs.

Personal

Exercise 2 times a week. (Yes, I'm actually dumb enough to resolve to do this. It might feel like a painful resolution for me, but I really need to work out more, and saying it here is going to help me keep it going, I hope.)

We'll see how all that goes. Probably, I've lost my mind. How are you doing? What are your resolutions?

Wrapping Up

2011-12-19T08:00:00.001-05:00

Hi guys.

I know it's been a long time since I posted anything, and there are no excuses, and I should be ashamed of myself for neglecting this blog and my online compatriots. I just got bogged down with work, the play I was working on, and my own writing. There have been some interesting developments -- I've started working with short stories as a medium, which has produced some interesting results -- and some less interesting developments -- which I'll spare you, because they aren't worth talking about.

It's coming down to the end of the year, and I thought I'd turn my gaze back to some of those resolutions I made at the start of the year to see how that all went. Do y'all remember all the things your swore to do at the start of the year? I know I had to go dig mine up to remember them all.

Writing Resolution

Edit and revise Thief Book, Cordamant's Heir, and Legal Aliens. I actually did this one. I revised all three texts majorly. I have since moved away from the Thief Book, but I'm definitely going to devote some more time in the new year to doing even more work with Cordamant's Heir.
Mini Goal: Edit 1k words a day. Pretty sure that's how the above was accomplished, so I'll call this one a success as well. So far, we are (2/2)

Reading

Read 65+ books this year. I'm still working on this one, but I have high hopes for it. I only have 1 book to go, and I'm currently powering through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo so that I'll have it done before we go see the movie. So, that gives me four days. I think I'll have that done.
Read Complete Works of William Shakespeare. While I made great strides with this one, I have not completed it. I still have nine plays to go on this front, and I honestly don't think I'll be able to finish this one up in time. Even if I do count only watching the plays instead of reading them.
Read the Bible cover to cover. This got nowhere near accomplished. I read a good hundred pages or so, but there's only so behind in this sort of project you can get before you have to cut your losses and run. I basically gave up on this one in around March. So, basically, we're at (3/5).

Blog

Post 3 times a week. Most likely MWF, but we'll see. I think we all know this one went completely to hell some time around September. Trying to resurrect it and my self-respect as a blogger. My most abject apologies.
Get back into the blogosphere and read more blogs. See above.

That brings my year long total to (3/7). Not my best work, I'll have to admit. So, next year, I'll have to take some serious consideration before I immediately decide to bite off more than I can chew.

Then again, you know, I like dreaming big. I like reaching for a little (sometimes a lot) more than I can possibly achieve. Because, you know, that's the only way I'm ever going to get more than I ever thought I could. If I still try for it.

So, really, 3/7 completed isn't my best score yet. But I made a lot of progress on all fronts, even the ones that didn't look so good at the end or didn't turn out to be everything I'd hoped. And you know what, it's been a pretty great year.

How's your year been, mes amis?

Big Changes

2011-08-26T08:00:00.001-04:00

So, Tuesday morning The Other One cut off my hair with a pair of scissors. A lot of it. Roughly 18 inches.

In her defense, this was preplanned, and I'm happy with the result. Still, it's a big change.

Embarrassing confession: The first time she came at me with the scissors, I screamed and ran into a corner -- notably with my hair to the wall to protect it. She carefully set the scissors down and said we'd try again when I was feeling better. This has brought her much amusement. In my defense, The Other One has always had a Use It and Lose It policy towards my hair. If it hit her, she was coming after it with scissors. She never actually cut it off, but there are some associations in my mind, apparently.

Eventually, my hair was considerably shorter, my old hair was laying neatly contained on my counter, and I was jumping up and down to see how my shorter hair bounced. (I promise I'm a reasonable person most of the time.)

The moral of this story is simple: Change is scary. (I know, no one's said that before.) Although I've been thinking about short hair for a while now (read: months and months), but actually gearing up to do it shocked me and took some adjusting.

Now I'm gonna circle this one back to writing, because I like to pretend that's what this blog is really about.

You ever look at an MS you need to edit and think about running away because oh my goshness you just have to make so many huge changes and it's going to be so hard and different? Ever get scared about a new idea, because it's just so different from everything you've ever done before and you just know it's going to be hard and messy? Ever stepped away from one set of characters to realize you've been with them so long you're not sure if you can write other characters half so well?

Growing as a writer develops messy and unpleasant things like thought and diligence and work. Sometimes it even involves changing our ideas, changing our stories and characters, or even changing in ourselves. But we have to do it if we ever want to be better, to be the best writers we can be. Yes, change is scary. Yes, new stuff is scary. But, yes, it is also totally worth it.

Any big changes on your end lately?

French It Up A Bit

2011-08-24T08:00:00.001-04:00

This weekend, I finished my first draft of Imogen and Leander. I am, of course, at lose ends. Apparently, I don't know what to do with myself when I'm not writing.

Anyway, this is the first story I've ever seen all the way through that contained multiple protagonists. Guess who they are. While other projects I've worked on have had a male lead who went opposite my female lead, that guy tended to be more of a Love Interest than a Male Protagonist. He wasn't the guy I was following around, generally.

Still, as I was writing, I kept getting the feeling that instead of sharing the screen time, as it were, Imogen was really hogging the limelight. So, reverting to my theater days, I made up a French Scene Breakdown.

Technically, a French Scene is a scene that begins and ends with an actor’s entrance or exit. So a French Scene Breakdown shows you when the character enters and exits the scenes.

Or, a visual example from Imogen and Leander. (I started with just Imogen and Leander, but I tacked on breakdowns for their primary compatriots, largely for my own amusement.)

This sort of chart strongly backs up my suspicion that while Leander does appear on more than half the pages of the text, he really is comparatively less represented. I'm taking this as a serious reminder that in my next draft I really need to go back in a beef up his storyline. Because, really, as my Male Protagonist, he's got to be doing as much as my Female Protagonist, or I'm going about this story the wrong way.

I think French Scene Breakdowns are very useful for analyzing plots and keeping track of story threads. It's a visual indicator of how often you're hitting all of your notes, a fact that can easily slip away from you in a large project.

Do you ever make something like a French Scene Breakdown? Have you ever used something like this ever? Do you like doing visual breakdowns? What sort?

Numbers or Letters

2011-08-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

For the record, this post was inspired by this video from the vlogbrothers who are, of course, made of awesome. Watch and enjoy.

In the video, John Green talks about this crazy idea that people have that literature is somehow easier than math or that math is this really complicated, incomprehensible thing, and how this just isn't true.

I have these memories of sitting at a table with some friends of my father listening to their son talking about the math he was studying at college and thinking, "Wow, he's really freaking smart." Because I did not understand that math he was talking about, but it sounded really freaking cool. And the characters I write tend to be math people, not literature people, which is weird, since I've always been a literature person.

Then again, my mother did advanced work in Chemistry, and she thinks I'm doing something really complicated by writing. And I've some friends who are math people who think literature is really complicated because it doesn't come with a set right answer.

You're probably asking why I'm rambling about all this. I guess it's just saying that sometimes it helps to remember that things are just hard, because you don't know how to do them, and just because something is hard to you or involves numbers or a foreign language or anything else doesn't make it more valuable than other things.

Boiling it down: Life is cool, and knowledge is beautiful.

So, how about you, numbers or letters or both?

Got Dreams?

2011-08-17T09:00:00.001-04:00

Last night, I watched the movie Tangled, an enjoyable film. In one scene, the MC tells several scary-looking men about her dream, and they begin sharing their's (a lovely return to the idea that there's a little good in all of us). It was nice. Later in the movie, a character remarked that the when one finishes one dream, the nice thing is that one gets a new dream.

This made me think. Because that's what all characters have. They have a dream, something they want more than anything else in the world. Maybe it's not what they're doing right now, maybe it's not something they think can ever happen, but it's something that's in there.

My present MC had a dream (live happily ever after with her husband). It fell off in the middle (she's pretty sure he's dead). She got a new dream (save her dad's life). Her dreams keep her going when all the other things are going horribly wrong.

Dreams are good for characters. They're definitely good for keeping them going. After all, they're something to hope for when everything else has already gone completely to heck (as things tend to do when a writer is in control and trying to raise the tension).

I've got a dream. It's got something to do with the stuff I tend to yammer about on the blog. As we might have guessed.

What about your characters? What do they dream about? What's your dream?

So, Here's What Happened

2011-08-15T08:00:00.000-04:00

Okay, let me catch you up, a while back, the author of this blog went to see a play, and every now and then, one of the characters would turn to the audience and basically tell them everything that had happened before the show, had already happened in the show, or was about to happen in the upcoming scenes. Now, whenever he was appearing as an actual character in a scene, she didn't mind him at all. It was when he turned into Captain Exposition that she thought he was annoying.

He was. Because, really, the audience didn't need him explaining any of these things. Usually, they were cleared up much more amusingly during the following musical number. So, really, he was just wasting the audience's time.

She just wanted the people to sing and him to shut up. Then she decided to go home and do a blog post about him and how things are more interesting when you show instead of tell, because the telling thing gets old real fast, even when you've got humor to cover.

...

...

Thanks for that, Captain Exposition. I was gonna write a whole post, but you sorta just stole my thunder. I guess I'll just go away now and have some tea. I'll see you all later.

If you have any thoughts, comments, or questions, I'll be happy to hear them. And I'll try to keep Captain Exposition away.

So Bad It's Good?

2011-08-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

The other day, Captain Film Major mentioned that when he comes across a bad line or scene in a movie, he'll rewind and watch it over again. When I asked why he would want to inflict that on himself a second/third/umpteenth time, he said he wanted to make sure it was really as bad as he'd originally thought.

Though this originally struck me as a little unusual (read: crazy weird) it's since dawned on me that it's not the most uncommon thing. After all, when I'm reading a conversation that seems to be going off the rails or the character is saying something utterly ridiculous, I find myself pausing to redirect the scene or patch up the rocky bits. I find myself trying to save it. Is that so different from Captain Film Major trying to see if maybe it wasn't that bad.

This leads me to an interesting thought. Normally, as writers, we are told to revisit works we considered particularly fantastic so that we could study what that author did right. Might it not also be worth our time to consider some things that were particularly awful so that we can see just went wrong and, possibly how it could have been made better?

Maybe studying things that we thought we massive train wrecks could actually be a useful tool for finding the errors in our own work and learning to correct them.

Do you ever find yourself revising work that's already done/published/released for your viewing pleasure? Have you ever read/watched/studied something just for its level of badness? Is there something to be learned from work that was just plain awful?

Got Dictionary?

2011-08-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

As you might have sensed from my previous post about irony, I have a thing about language. Namely, there's what words mean, and when you use them to mean different things, it doesn't change the meaning of the word but sure says a heck of a lot about you.

Now, what's about to follow is a less obsessive version of 'gay does not mean annoying' and 'retarded does not mean inconvenient' comments more commonly point out. But this is basically the same premise.

The Other One was telling me about a friend of hers who misused the word disinterested in an essay, because she "liked the way it sounded." When The Other One pointed out she had changed the meaning of the sentence by using a different word, the girl replied that most people use the word incorrectly and would thus understand her incorrect usage. Or -- and I believe this is a direct quote -- "You're only confused, because you know what this word actually means."

It is at moments like these that I want to introduce my head the my desk and make them roommates.

The only way language works is that we all agree about what words mean. Otherwise, I'll be going to Starbucks to get a dog by which I mean iced coffee, and they'll say they don't have hammers, by which they mean pets. Words mean what they mean.

I know, I'm probably a ranting crazy about this, but this will probably never stop being something I care about. Precision in language is not a waste. It is the beauty of it.

Thoughts?

Isn't It Ironic, Don't You Think?

2011-08-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

Just the other day, I was watching a video in which someone explained that he uses the word gay to mean stupid because he is "an ironic liberal." I am not linking anyone to this video, as the arguments it contained were ridiculous (not gay -- ironically or otherwise -- because arguments are not attracted to other arguments of any sort or gender, assuming that arguments even have genders, which I doubt).

Let's clear a few things up:

1) Irony is "the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning." Thus, using gay as stupid would imply that the concepts of homosexuality and intelligence were in any way related. This is incredibly untrue. Thus, there is no capacity for the use of the term gay to mean stupid and achieve irony. I would say sorry,but it would have to be ironically, because I in no way apologize for the meaning of these words.

2) As the word gay refers either to homosexuality or happiness (setting aside all overlaps thereof which would be puns and not ironic), the only way to achieve irony using this word would be to use it to refer to things that were either heterosexual or sad (including any overlaps thereof, which would not be puns or ironic). Thus, if I referred to two heterosexuals of the opposite gender kissing as gay, that might be construed as ironic, but more likely we would consider that annoying and ridiculous, and I'd look like a prat.

Ironic does not refer to things that are frustrating, accidentally offensive, or just don't make any sense. I'm sorry, that catchall, quick fix only works on people who don't know what the word means. I'd like to think most of us do.

Remember the song "Ironic" by Alanis Morisette? (Which I will link to, because it's a nice song.) Of course, the real irony of that song is how much of the song is not really ironic. But we know that now.

So, please, people of the internet, stop misusing the word ironic or assuming it's a quick cover for being a prat. You're damaging the English language, misinforming people about the meaning of words, and frustrating the people who know what that word actually means. And because you're making a fool of yourself. There's that too.

Are you a fan of irony?

Getting Into You

2011-08-03T08:00:00.001-04:00

At the end of the semi-autobiographical play Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang, [SPOILER ALERT] Hwang admits that the character he's been playing opposite, the main source of the drama of the play, is fictional: "Marcus, is a fictional character, created by me...because I'm a writer, and in the end, everything's always about me."

[END SPOILER ALERT]

I think Hwang had a point when he says "I'm a writer, and in the end, everything's always about me." (Sorry for the repeat, but I wanted the key piece to be on the other end of the spoiler alert so I could do the post without giving away the ending.) As writers, it is always about us. Because, in much the same way every aspect of a dream is a representative of the dreamer's psyche, the aspects of the story are representatives of the writer's psyche.

Let's face it, these characters are fictional. They might be based on real people. They might be inspired by true events. But the long and short of it, these are all a bunch of people we made up. (Hint: if you didn't make these people up, there might be problems in your future, even if it's just the friend who gets very mad that you killed them in the end.) And, because we made them up, they are little bits of us, and they do what we say (usually) and they say what we want (usually).

I'm not saying that everything that happens in a book in necessarily true of the author or the author's life, but that idea came from somewhere inside the author. It made it onto the page because the author had an idea and ran with it. Thus, some of that author did make it onto the page.

We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.

So, yes, in a way, it is all about us. Bits of us, anyway.

What do you think?

Shadings vs. Flaws

2011-08-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, when I was new to the whole writing thing (and by new I mean so wet behind the ears, you'd think someone would have handed me a towel) I showed a friend some notes for my second book (because, I was so new that I thought this would be easy and that my first one was already perfect). My friend told me she didn't think it was going to work. She said my characters seemed a little to perfect. She told me they needed flaws.

I was confused. Did I have to turn my characters into bad people just to make them real? Because that seemed to reflect a rather dim view of humanity.

It took me a long time (a really long time, an embarrassingly long time) to realize that my characters didn't need flaws per se. What they needed were shading.

There's a difference between flaws and shading. Shading fills out the character, adding layers and helping a reader see the depth to the character, much like shading in a painting demonstrates the three dimensional nature of the object shown. Flaws and bad things about a character are a type of shading. However, they should not be confused with shading in its entirety.

When painting a three dimensional object, there are shadows, but there are also highlights. You need both to show a three dimensions. When there are negative attributes to a character, there are also positive ones. Maybe your character pops her gum and is also a terrible procrastinator, but she also calls her grandmother every week and grows geraniums. Both make her into a fuller person, and they don't all do it by making her look annoying or frustrating or in the case of some flaws, just plain evil.

Characters need to be filled out so that they look more like people going through something and less like cardboard cut outs just forcing their way to fill out the plot.

It took me years, but I finally figured that out.

How do you feel about shading your characters? Anything that took you a while to figure out?

Stats are Whack (and Wicked Helpful)

2011-07-29T08:00:00.002-04:00

Once upon a time, I was discussing Miss Snitch with my dad, and I mentioned that two of the secondary male characters were dating each other. Now, I tend not to bring up my characters' personal business unless it's actually related to what they're doing, and in this case it was. But my dad's reaction was something along the lines of "Isn't that a bit much for YA?"

Me, I didn't think so. Because, near as I can tell, most teens have met LGBT people. There are LGBT people in the schools YA readers go to. Most teens are fans of LGBT celebrities. Some readers will be LGBT people. To boil this down: No, because LGBT people are a fact of life and thus are fit for books.

Once upon a time, in the fantastic play The Importance of Being Ernest by the utterly wonderful Oscar Wilde, "I don't know whether there is anything particularly exciting about the air in this particular part of Hertfordshire, but the number of engagements that go on seem to me to be considerably above the proper average that statistics have laid down for our guidance." This is very useful advice, even when one isn't trying to get engaged.

In life, the shadow (stats) move in response to the sun (people), but in fiction, if you want it to look like life, the the shadows of actual life need to tell us, as writers, where our suns should be pointing.

Hannah from Invincible Summer once posed the question: Why aren't there more characters like me?

This is a good question. Readers want to be able to recognize themselves in the books they read. But, if that's really going to happen, books have to reflect actual life with characters like actual people. That includes the statistical minorities. They exist in life, so why aren't they in the books?

I, for one, think sometimes I try so hard not to make every character in my book just like me that maybe I forget to make them like people. To include a little something for everyone. But it's definitely something I'm trying to work on. Because everyone reads books, so everyone should have someone to relate to in them. No one should be out there thinking, "Why aren't there characters like me?"

How do you feel about this? Do you let stats or your life experiences tell you how to make up your world? Do you have trouble finding characters like you?

Where's my shady corner?

2011-07-27T08:00:00.000-04:00

Hi,

I think we've met. I'm the villain with no motivation. I appear in movies, books, plays, and operas. I do bad things to good people for no particular reason.

You probably don't like me. That's okay. I'm doing bad things to good people and enjoy it. I kick puppies when I don't have anything better to do -- and sometimes when I do have better things to do as well. And, quite frankly, I'm a little bit boring, because, you know, I don't really have a reason to do any of these things or any redeeming qualities to make what I'm doing worth watching.

You probably wish you knew what I was doing here, because it probably looks like I cropped up for no good reason to make people's lives harder for no good reason. You probably wish I had any motivation, because that might make me vaguely understandable or cause me to in some way resemble a human being. You probably wish I weren't here at all, that someone much more interesting and, who knows, maybe even devilishly handsome would appear and take my place so you'd have something better to look at.

But I'm not going to let any of those happen.

Why?

No reason. Because I'm the villain with no motivation. So I want to make your life harder.

(The Angel on Your Shoulder will now take this moment to ask what sort of villains you love, what sort you hate, what sort you write. Drop her a line. The Villain with No Motivation probably won't answer, because he doesn't care about what others think, but you should feel free to leave him a note too.)

Do You Need A Calendar?

2011-07-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

Sorry about no post on Friday. I promise I didn't forget you, my lovelies, but I was out of town Thursday and Friday in a place where I had no Internet access, and I hadn't scheduled my post to come out.

In other news, I'm working on something new (so new it doesn't even have an official title), and I've hit a snag.

My times are off.

This is a new one for me, but for some reason, things are not unfolding in chronological order. My Male Lead and Female Lead are in different places and thus are following their own threads for quite a while. Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how or when this occurred, my Male Lead Thread got three days ahead of my Female Lead Thread, so every time I move back to my Female Lead, I'm always backing up a bit.

How big a sin is this?

I know I'm not alone in non-linear or nonchronistic stories. Lord of the Rings gets straightened our and put in chronological order for the movies, but most of the books follows one set for a considerable ways and then jumps back to the same point to follow the other set for a while.

But they follow the same set for an extended period, and they pick of at the same point. I'm not quite doing that.

My only thoughts right now are that I'll figure out how off it can be for others when I pass this one out to betas. Until then, I'll go with my gut and keep the nonchronisitic order.

How about you? Do you always follow a chronological order? How do you manage multiple threads?

Refile to the Recycle Bin

2011-07-20T08:00:00.002-04:00

On Monday, I mentioned the idea of scraping off the paint -- undoing what one has done -- in the effort to create art. I think this is fitting. Sometimes, it seems to me, that the biggest part of editing is not finding the right word to put on the page -- though that is important -- but actually finding all the words that do not belong on the page, and getting rid of them.

In a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934, Hemingway wrote, “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.” Yes, even Hemingway produced some bad writing. No one is immune.

He's not alone in cutting the rubbish. John Green claims the best part of his books come out in the revisions and that he's lucky to use 10% of the original draft.

Sometimes, the key to good writing is just cutting the junk.

While I hope my ratio is slightly better than 1:91, that's sometimes how I feel about my writing. For The Thief Book, a good 70% of the original draft probably made it into the rubbish bin. In my revision of my first draft of Cordamant's Heir, I sliced a good 10k off. And, you know, I really feel both projects were the better for it. The Thief Book just ended wrong, and it all had to go. Cordamant's Heir came in really heavy and contained either plot threads that weren't going anywhere because I didn't want to develop them or had parts that were just redundant.

The first time we write things, they are generally not brilliant. Sometimes, they just need a spit shine. Other times, they need a fair amount of nipping and tucking. Other times, they just need a hacksaw and a trip to the recycle bin.

The trick is telling the junk from the masterpiece.

Do you feel like you end up binning most of your original MS, or are you often able to keep most of what you put down? How do you feel about major cuts?

A Touch of Light

2011-07-18T08:00:00.004-04:00

While I usually compare my writing process to sculpture, today I'm going to branch out a bit and talk about painting. Shouldn't that be fun?

It has been explained to me by a few people that painting with watercolors and painting with oils are very different experience. A key difference between the two is the light.

In oils, light is the last thing you do. You do all your objects and background first, and the light is the final touch of color to show were on the objects you've drawn, your light hits.

In watercolors, things are much trickier. To a certain extent, light is actually the first thing you do, because the light is the space you leave in from the beginning. Light is, in effect, the space where you do nothing.

It seems to me, in some ways, writing is like both of those things, depending on who you are. It's all a matter of the planning.

Some people are planners. They can see right from the beginning where they're going to go, how they're going to get there, and what the scenery is like where they park. They can tell where to leave the light in.

Some people don't know quite so much in advance. They change direction midway through. People appear who weren't even imagined at page one. And, heaven help us all, sometimes we end up somewhere not at all like where we meant to go. Hey, things happen. In that case, you put the light in last, once you've figured out what the picture's really going to look like.

The point is, both styles, while different, produce fantastic artwork.

Me, I think I right like a Cezanne painting. You've done your darks. You've added your light. It's still not done. So you turn your brush around and scrape off some of the paint, baring things down to the canvas. Hey, if it get's the job done...

How about you? How do you paint? Water or oils? Back of the brush?

Evidence of Things Not Seen

2011-07-15T08:00:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, I played the character Douglass in a play called "Party Time" by Harold Pinter. A friend of mine was playing Dame Melissa. When we mentioned to some friends that we were in the same play, they exclaimed, "Cool. We'll come. What's it about?"

That, as it turned out, was where the trouble started. Because, after staring at each other for two minutes, we realized that having auditioned for, been cast in, and read the play, we still couldn't say what it was about.

Of course, two months later, when we were ready to go up, we could answer that question almost succinctly. It just took some explaining.

As it turns out, the thing that made the play so interesting but also so hard to describe that it didn't have the usual sort of plot. This occurred, but they didn't coalesce toward one main character or one main goal. Instead, the real action of the play all seemed to be happening off-stage.

The play was about what all the characters weren't talking about or were being told not to talk about.

This is a tricky proposition. How does one build an entire plot whilst not saying things? How does one delete just enough to leave gaps big enough to see but small enough things don't fall through?

While I firmly believe that black cannot be seen without white and that it is entirely possible to draw a white egg on a white paper using only colored pencils, I wonder how much we can leave not there and have people still be able to see anything at all.

Obviously, it can be done. It has been done. But I find it a tricky and intimidating consideration nonetheless.

I do not favor the minimalist style when I write. In my first draft, I chuck things on the paper. Tons of things, not always with a clear plan about what to do with them or a full understanding of what they mean. In my next draft, I carve things out that I don't need anymore, things that were overstated, things I changed my mind about. I create the white space that wasn't there again. Then again, in later drafts, I also add things back in. I set up things I'd made decisions about later in the process. I change things do not reflect my final vision of the character. I add the black back in.

Writing's a growing process, to my way of seeing it. Each draft is a continuous process of shading and erasing, altering line thicknesses and darkness. To varying degrees, of course. But I do know that, by the time I'm done, it's a piece composed largely of what is said, not what is unsaid.

How about you? Do you favor the spoken or the unspoken when you read? When you write?

I Feel Magic

2011-07-04T08:00:00.001-04:00

At one point, I had a plan. Isn't that how it always starts? You always have a plan, and it always goes straight to hell. If not instantly, somewhere along the way, the plan just gets blown to bits.

My plan for this year involved editing. Lots of editing. As in, I was going to pull out each of those WsIP I had lying around "simmering" and actually get those things shiny enough to see the light of day.

My plan did not involve writing. Because what I really needed were more MSs overcooking on my backburner. No, this was going to be the year when, instead of generating more unedited, untouched babies, I was actually going to raise a couple into something nice and lovely.

Did I mention that that plan went completely to hell?

After assiduously editing two books -- I don't know if I ever mentioned my edits on Cordamant's Heir, but I think I just changed more than a fifth of that baby, including dropping 10k -- I felt all fresh and ready to bite into something Shiny and New.

Thus came out the lovely work temporarily entitled Here We Go Again, which feels apt in so many ways. This lovely baby had been simmering, then bubbling, then full on boiling in my brain for a good 6 months, and trust me if it hadn't gotten out soon, it might have done some permanent damage in there.

Now, after 2 months of dedicated effort -- and more secondary source involvement than I've ever put into a text -- I've got a first draft.

SQUEAL!

She isn't perfect, I'll be the first to admit it, and she's not going to be meeting anyone else -- let alone a stranger -- for a while yet, but she's so lovely and new and interesting -- to me at least -- that frankly I don't care.

I feel like magic.

How about you?

Happy Happy

2011-07-04T07:30:00.000-04:00

To All Canadian Readers, Happy Belated Canada Day!

To All American Readers, Happy Independence Day!

Celebrations all around!

Did We Read the Same Source Material?

2011-06-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

Ever go see a movie based on a book you really like and walk out thinking, "I'm sorry, did we read the same book?" Characters have disappeared or been created, entire story arcs were cut or doubled in size, moments of deep symbolic meaning or absolutely no meaning whatsoever materialized from nowhere while deeply meaningful moments vanished in a puff of smoke.

I think we've all been there. And, if you're like more, you tend to leave the theater in something of a huff. It's very rare that I leave a theater having seen a flick that made radical changes to the text where I didn't think, "You're not seriously claiming that was based on the book? You barely nodded to the original text!"

Because for me, there's a line between Based On, Inspired By, and Loosely Connected To (See How We Kept The Names the Same).

I'm not saying I've never seen it well done. The movie Stardust in 2007 got very free with Niel Gaiman's novel -- a book I liked quite a bit -- and when I saw many of the changes, I said, "Nice. I see why you did that." Because many of the adaptations were made as concessions to the medium rather than in total disregard for the original text.

On the other hand, Elton John's rock opera version of Aida is, to my mind, more Inspired By Verdi's original than actually based on it. They cut 3 of the acts, change most of Amneris's character arc, and rewrite a fair amount of Radames's backstory. But, you know, they kept the names the same. It's a nice reference, but, to me, almost a different play entirely.

Captain Film Major tends to come to the defense of adaptations. He says I expect them to bear too strong a resemblance to the book. Maybe I do. But that's because I have a very strict interpretation of the line between Based On and Inspired By. I think when you start getting jiggy with the plot, you're crossing over. He doesn't share that opinion.

For the first time, the project I'm working on was inspired by certain source material, and I chose to work closely with that material in the creation of the text. On the other hand, as the piece grew on its own, it moved away from the original source. I'd already changed most names, many motivations, a fair amount of characterization, and the ending. I think I've moved from Based On to Inspired By and, who knows, maybe even closer to Connected To (See How I Make All Those References). But that's just where the project wants to go.

How about you? Where do you draw the lines of Based On and Inspired By? Do you ever do Based On work? Inspired By?

Just a Bit Too Easy

2011-05-23T09:33:00.002-04:00

We've heard me gripe in the past about Easy Button Endings, where everything gets wrapped up a little too quickly and cleanly for things to quite make sense.

But, up there with Easy Button Endings might just be Easy Button Openers. How you open up a book, plot arch, or character is important. And, if you don't put the effort into opening them properly, there's going to be a sense on the part of the reader that it was rushed and doesn't quite fit.

Have you ever seen a movie where the villain walks in, kicks a puppy, and then insults his own mother? No, because that would be like hanging a giant, glowing sign above his head announcing I AM THE BAD GUY. But, you know, I've seen some openers that come pretty close. I've seen movies where one of the first things you see the new villain do is shoot some pretty, young thing dead for little reason, and then the camera stays on that so you can remember that he's not a nice guy. To my mind, not subtle.

We like subtlety. We like nuance. It makes characters more interesting and believable. It gives people a chance to find something to love in the villain so that they can feel more like they're reading about real people instead of a cardboard cut-out of a bad guy.

Writing a good opening is hard. Just like all good writing is hard. But we owe it to readers to figure out how to tell the story right. We owe it to our characters. We owe it to ourselves. Because it's worth it.

Ever seen any openers that made you want to drop the book and run? Any that you thought were just so incredibly awesome? How's your writing going?

Weird = Good?

2011-05-20T08:00:00.001-04:00

Sorry, I'm not going to be scintillating today. I know, this is starting to sound like the worst comeback ever. But, for necessary reasons, as a result of yesterday, I am in a certain amount of physical discomfort. (I'm totally fine. I'm just also a total wuss.) I also spent yesterday not thinking about this blog.

But something did occur to me this morning about yesterday. I realized that while I was sore and loopy yesterday, the rational part of my mine was saying, "You have to remember this. It's good empirical experience to draw on when you're writing."

This is not the first time I've had the reaction to a situation.

Is this just me? Whenever some weird/new thing happens, do you start thinking, I need to store this up so I can use it in a book?

I'm Back

2011-05-18T08:00:00.000-04:00

Okay, I hereby acknowledge that I am an absolute wretch for just taking off somewhere for two months. I absolutely promise that I wasn't abducted by aliens, but I can't promise that I was not temporarily in the Witness Protection Program. But, you know how those things are.

I'm just kidding. I somehow got ridiculously busy. It's not excuse, but, as I said, I'm horrible. In other news, I'm writing again. Working on another first draft. I'm both excited and absolutely terrified. You know, the usual.

How have you fine people been? What did I miss?

Other things we learn from bio lab

2011-02-09T10:17:00.002-05:00

You might remember my discussion of bio lab in my last post. About the time my prof mentioned you need to read a lot of lab reports to know what you like, she also mentioned you need to read a lot of reports to learn something else: What's been done.

When doing a write up, you need to acknowledge what's been done before. If you don't keep track of what's been done around your subject, your research could end up looking totally derivative and useless.

It's sort of the same thing with books. Sometimes the same idea occurs to three people at the same time (I've heard of it), but if you never read, you'll never know it's been done before or how to make your book original in comparison.

Books are good. Books are fun. Books are context.

Go forth and read!

You've Got To Look For What You Like

2011-02-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, I sat in a Bio Lab where the prof assigned us a pair of articles and asked for our critiques. After a while, she explained that part of the point was for us to get used to looking at reports objectively, since we'd have to write them later. Then she said, "When you read things, you get a sense of what you like to see. Then you can do that."

That's when I had one of those *ding* moments. Like a little light bulb over my head.

It was like rehearing all of those things that writing sites and books always say all over again:

Write what you'd like to read.
Study published books. See how they're put together and learn from it.
Remember what made you like reading that book, and try to absorb that awesome.

I've been remiss in the reading department lately. Bad on me. Books are an essential for a writer. I do solemnly swear to make time for reading.

What have you been reading lately? What books have taught you about writing?

That Time At The Place With The Stuff

2011-01-24T08:00:00.000-05:00

Because I love xkcd so much, I'm going to open with this.

Human beings, when they're talking to people they know pretty well, have inside jokes. They make references to past experiences and conversations. Interesting characters will do this as well.

Don't believe me? Watch this clip from Love Actuallybetween 5:42 and 6:00.

Now, come on, isn't that an absolutely fabulous opening?

In that opener, we get a sense of who each guy is and just how well they know each other. Because they've got these shared experiences they can reference talking to each other.

Inside jokes -- so long as they're explained enough that one knows they're inside jokes -- can be a great way of explaining just how long characters have known each other, how well they know each other, and -- depending on the joke -- can provide hints to back story that might be apparent later.

Useful, no?

So, how about those zebras?

Do you like inside jokes? Do your characters tell them? How do you feel about character's rehashing shared experiences and telling inside jokes?