Blog Memory and World Building

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)?

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

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

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

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

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

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?